More on the planned expedition :
Finance millionaire aims to track 'extinct' rhino in war-torn Africa
Finance millionaire aims to track 'extinct' rhino in war-torn Africa
The Revival of the Northern White Rhino?
- Thread starter The Speeding Carnotaurus
- Start date
This sounds like a movie plot...
But in all seriousness while I have my doubts that they will find much of real conservation consequence, this might help make the Northern White Rhino into more of a media story. Hopefully, this will bring even more media coverage in addition to its heavy coverage last year. Ideally, the news stories will help bring light to conservation issues of other species like the Sumatrans or Javans.
SDSP and Embryo Plus South Africa have together collected eggs from 9 year old female Southern White Rhinoceros, Nikita, in a step towards genetically recovering the Northern White Rhino.
San Diego Zoo Researchers Retrieve Rhino’s Eggs to Recover Critically Endangered Species
Phase 3 egg collection was completed recently.
See Kenya Wildlife Service Facebook page:
Security Check Required
Early results: 2 ovae from F Najin and 8 ovae from Fatu.
The plan is to sterilise an overrepresented southern white rhino bull at Ol Pejeta and use a group of SWR females on the conservancy for the surrogate mother role and implantation of fertilised ovae.
See Kenya Wildlife Service Facebook page:
Security Check Required
Early results: 2 ovae from F Najin and 8 ovae from Fatu.
The plan is to sterilise an overrepresented southern white rhino bull at Ol Pejeta and use a group of SWR females on the conservancy for the surrogate mother role and implantation of fertilised ovae.
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These are real intresting developments and hopefully some succes will be archieved !
Have there been any more recent updates on this?
A project like this is unprecedented and will take a lot of time, especially in a COVID gripped world. The plan to use Southern Whites to bring back Northern Whites has been public for over two years now and they're still in the relatively early phase of it. Give the program time, you will hear news eventually either way.
~Thylo
The research team are hopeful for the birth of a Northern white rhinoceros calf around 2025:
Dr. Korody says her team has made great progress, including successfully turning skin cells from Angilifu, a male Northern White rhino who died at the Safari Park in 2014, into stem cells and turning those stem cells into heart cells. They even recorded incredible video of those living heart cells beating in a petri dish.
Along with the cell portion of the project, tremendous progress has also been made with the in vitro research. This fall, the Zoo celebrated the first birthdays of two Southern White Rhinos who were born using the technology the team hopes to use with the Northern White embryos.
When ABC 10News first began covering the Northern White Rhino plan in 2015, Dr. Durrant estimated it would be ten years before a Northern White calf would be successfully born. Now halfway through that timeline, she says she believes they are right on track.
Full article: San Diego Zoo makes progress in ambitious effort to save endangered rhino species
Dr. Korody says her team has made great progress, including successfully turning skin cells from Angilifu, a male Northern White rhino who died at the Safari Park in 2014, into stem cells and turning those stem cells into heart cells. They even recorded incredible video of those living heart cells beating in a petri dish.
Along with the cell portion of the project, tremendous progress has also been made with the in vitro research. This fall, the Zoo celebrated the first birthdays of two Southern White Rhinos who were born using the technology the team hopes to use with the Northern White embryos.
When ABC 10News first began covering the Northern White Rhino plan in 2015, Dr. Durrant estimated it would be ten years before a Northern White calf would be successfully born. Now halfway through that timeline, she says she believes they are right on track.
Full article: San Diego Zoo makes progress in ambitious effort to save endangered rhino species
Another article about northern white rhinoceros
See link below for details:
And then there were two: can northern white rhinos be saved from extinction?
See link below for details:
And then there were two: can northern white rhinos be saved from extinction?
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Interesting article but reading it didn't really change my views on the subspecies and its future.
I think it will be an enormous waste of time and money / resources to do anything at all with the Northern rhino.
Far better to focus on the Sumatran rhino, that should be the priority here, not a doomed subspecies of the white rhino.
I'm sure you would still agree that the Northern white rhino is a distinct subspecies from the Southern white rhino? So attempts to bring it back from the precipice serve many different purposes, not solely saving a subspecies of rhino.
Firstly, the Northern white rhino story is a very welcome one in terms of publicity for NGOs and zoos (particularly SDZ and SDZSP). It highlights an ongoing struggle coordinated by several zoos to save a species, working together with multiple governments and NGOs involved in the process. It shows a will to save species and counteracts animal rights activists' attempts to undermine zoos' role in conservation, both in and ex situ. As you can see by the high number of articles linked in this thread and the hundreds on top of that scattered over the internet, the story has garnered major attention worldwide - people are aware of the Northern white rhino in a way they they wouldn't be if everybody just gave up.
As a similar point, it pushes worldwide wildlife extinction to the forefront of people's minds. While they may not have heard of the vaquita or the saola, they may well end up reading an article on the NWR that mentions either of both of the aforementioned species. In addition, the poignant, shocking figure that there are only two of them left does draw more attention then 'a possibly extinct porpoise'. More people are likely to see global extinction as a major crisis therefore.
Furthermore, this research blazes a trail for other species and subspecies. If it can be done with the NWR, there is hope it could be done with other species, and faster! You reference the Sumatran rhino - this show of coherence between NGOs and zoos (and perhaps even governments) could encourage further action and hope for that species, along with the Javan rhino - to whom the research being completed currently could be vital in the future.
And of course there is the importance of saving the subspecies. While others have expressed different opinions on this thread, I believe that a species and indeed a subspecies fills a completely different ecological niche to any other taxon (at least at that point in time). The subspecies is a result of tens of thousands of years (if not much more) of evolution, and therefore by letting it go extinct, are we not just deleting - cancelling - that? If we introduce Southern white rhinos into South Sudan and the DRC, while they will not have the same effect as e.g an invasive species, it is like introducing an Amur tiger into Sumatra - it simply isn't where that subspecies is adapted to be.
I hope that sort of explains my views on this.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Yes , it explains your viewpoint very well but I don't agree with your view at all and in fact I think it is totally erroneous.
In conservation we simply cannot save everything, we do not have enough resources and we do not have enough time.
Maybe you are not aware of this yet but conservation is a crisis discipline and in some cases we will sadly have to triage our conservation efforts and critically examine where our priorities are going. This is inevitable whether we like it or not and from what I've observed people are not quite psychologically ready to acknowledge this yet.
I personally feel that the Northern white rhino situation as sad as it is is one of those situations where we do need to triage heavily, enough money has been spent on trying to save the subspecies over the years. Now is the time to treat the last individuals as we would a terminally ill patient in a hospital ward, that is to say with compassionate pallitative care and after their deaths move on to what we can do with still extant species.
The Sumatran rhino is the only member of its genus, not a mere subspecies , it represents a lineage that stretches back to the miocene and 15-20 million years of evolution.
Actually I don't think it does raise conservation optimism nor do I think that it is useful in terms of raising awareness of other species. What it does is take the narrative of a doomed species and give people a reason to have pity parties on social media and mutter platitudes rather than inspire and action towards species that haven't quite reached the point of no return yet.
If we are brutally honest one of the reasons why both of the South-East Asian rhinoceros have been historically neglected has been because of the media bias and spotlight being fixated on what is going on with rhino poaching in Africa for the past few decades.
What the kind of focus that you mention and advocate does is push species that with some prioritization we can still save like the Sumatran rhino back further into the shadows in terms of awareness raising and precisely at a time when we need all of the spotlight on the situation in order to galvanise the necessary economic, political and social will to save the species.
Moreover, I suppose you might say that the Sumatran rhino does the opposite in the sense of symbolically undermining zoos with the history of the failed attempts of zoos to conserve the species ex-situ by building up an insurance population, right ?
Well maybe it is inconvenient for zoos, but who cares ?
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I am well aware of this, that was the point of my second and third paragraphs in the original post. News stories raise awareness, which raises the number of donations, which in turn raises the sum of money these NGOs and zoos have to fund not only the NWR campaign but also the conservation of other, arguably more important species which would not have nearly the same capacity to incite action and awareness.
Yes, but there is also an element of strategy. There is a reason WWF's website only lists megafauna as the animals they support - these are they flagship species that bring in the money - very few people are going to give money to a campaign to save the Lord How stick insect but many people would give to an effort to save elephants or tigers, just like in zoos, where the latter are the species that bring in the money, and the former those that (at least partly) benefit from it.
Of course you may say that I am not psychologically ready to acknowledge that saving a species of frog is more important than saving a subspecies of rhino but it is impossible to save the former without the latter quite simply. If it was just frogs and inverts that were highly endangered, conservation would have ridiculously little fuel to run on!
Not letting them go extinct as I said in the above post, is a statement. It is a sign that those who care about wildlife (because yes, normal people don't think of insects or herps or plants when you mention wildlife) are not willing to let a subspecies of rhino slip through the cracks. If they had let it go and given up 5 years ago, the subspecies would have garnered significantly less media attention, since the vast majority of these stories are about attempts to save the rhinos and not about how it is basically doomed. And as pointed out before Media attention essentially equals more money to save the 'more important' taxa.
Well yes, I agree. Most people aren't even aware there are rhinos in Asia. A massive, inter-governmental, worldwide and perfectly coordinated PR effort would change the focus but there is no such thing, at least not in the realm of conservation.
I don't quite understand what you suggest we do. Drop the Northern white rhinoceros, then what? Spend money on more important projects? But what money? These are all questions that need to be answered for your opinion to be valid - you can criticise all you wish, but how do you suggest we create an impetus to incite action rather than what we have now?
As an example to disprove your point about platitudes and lack of action, Save the Rhino, one of the more prominent conservation organisations for rhinos, began in 2001, raising £300,000 a year. In recent years they have raised sevenfold that, £2,000,000. They act over six African countries and two Asian countries, working with all five species of rhinoceros, yet the majority of their money is being generated through the African rhinos. This, more than anything else that I have seen, proves that the money generated by widespread campaigning for African rhinos is being pumped into Asian rhino conservation, and this model is repeated all over the animal kingdom.
In what way does it push Sumatran rhinos further back into the shadows? I am really confused by that statement - people cannot give to a special donations box marked 'Northern White rhino Ova recovery', if they see a story on the NWR and want to give, which some people, believe it or not, do, then they give to WWF or Save the Rhino, NGOs invested in the futures of more than just one species or subspecies. The money is not just pumped into a single subspecies as you imply. And if the Sumatran rhino doesn't get as much attention as the African rhinos, why does it matter? Some of the money given to charities working to save rhinos, or endangered species, will go into Sumatran rhino conservation doubtlessly.
Your implication that I am averse to Sumatran rhino conservation being brought to the forefront of the fight against extinction because it could give rise to news stories about zoos' failures in that respect is both ridiculous and disingenuous. What you have to realise is that a great portion of people on this website are zoo enthusiasts because they love animals, which normally results in a desire to see them saved, unless that person happens to lack a brain. Many of us are interested in zoos because of the role they have to play in in and ex situ conservation. So to imply that we object to Sumatran rhino conservation because of the potential damage it could have to certain zoos' reputations is insulting, frankly.
I know you have mixed feelings towards zoos - we all do to an extent, some more than others. I happen to be aware of the downfalls of zoos and I like to think I have a decently nuanced and balanced view of the situation. I'm not sure how that final comment was intended but it something like that will never make anyone take you argument more seriously.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Ok, lets be clear here, I am not talking about the megafauna bias at all so I don't know why you are bringing this up other than it being something that we have clashed over previously on other threads.
I wasn't actually suggesting that you are not psychologically ready to deal with "saving a species of frog" but rather that some people are not willing to acknowledge that we cannot save everything , that our resources are finite and that time and triage is of the essence.
I am specifically discussing the case of the Sumatran rhino and how precarious its current situation is and the undeniable pertinence of this when it comes to millions being injected into a very foolish plan (and I am putting it very charitably there) to reinvigorate a doomed subspecies of rhino rather than focusing on one that is in dire need of our efforts and care.
Incidentally WWF is possibly the worst example to cite when it comes to a discussion on how funding is spent / mismanaged in conservation because this organization in particular has chronic issues with the mismanagement of funds , have been investigated for embezzlement and corruption and they have invested millions in oil and gas pipelines and other fossil fuel investments. I won't go into all of the other allegations that have been made against WWF as I would be writing all night but suffice to say they are not quite the "conservation heroes" that you believe them to be.
Again with regards to media coverage of situation facing the Sumatran rhinoceros there is no such thing within the world of conservation because the media spotlight has been shining on African rhinoceros species for over four decades now !
You are indeed a zoo enthusiast, that is correct, and I am a conservation biologist working within the world of conservation (including ex-situ programes in zoos) and therefore I have an inside look and insight into the world of conserving species in-situ and ex-situ that you simply do not have nor ever probably will.
Now these are some quotes from an article that I suggest you read called "Africa’s rhinos hog the limelight while their Asian cousins head for extinction" that was published in "The Conversation" by the ecologist David Tosh at Queen's University, Belfast about the issue (link below):
Africa's rhinos hog the limelight while their Asian cousins head for extinction
"More than 80% of money distributed by Save the Rhino between 2008-09 and 2012-13 went to programmes supporting conservation in Africa. Why? Even before the resurgence of rhino poaching in Africa, spending was biased towards the continent."
"The African rhino is therefore a perfect example of utilitarian-based conservation – the preservation of something because of its monetary value to humans. They are worth more, to more people, than their Asian counterparts and are as a result the focus of more conservation efforts."
"So why are media outlets and conservation organisations focusing on African Rhino? Corruption, a recognised inhibitor to effective conservation, is arguably comparable in the regions that African and Asian species are found and can’t be used as an excuse. I also highly doubt that the global public value Asian species any less than African. It mainly comes down to one thing: money from tourism."
"Africa is largely made up of developing countries whose economies are based on agricultural, rather than industrial, output. Consequently tourism is an important stream of revenue for governments, private businesses and local people. In Indonesia and Nepal, where most of Asia’s wild rhinos live, tourists are mostly there for the beaches or the mountains. They simply aren’t as reliant on safari-dollars as a country like Botswana."
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
By the way, your rather clumsy and slippery insinuation that I was suggesting that zoochatters object to Sumatran rhino conservation because of the "the potential damage it could have to certain zoos' reputations" is once again your own invention and doesn't even closely match what I said.
What I said was the following :
"Moreover, I suppose you might say that the Sumatran rhino does the opposite in the sense of symbolically undermining zoos with the history of the failed attempts of zoos to conserve the species ex-situ by building up an insurance population, right ?
Well maybe it is inconvenient for zoos, but who cares ?"
What I meant by this was that the failed track record that zoos have had with the Sumatran rhino ex-situ though inconvenient in terms of their public image is not at all a valid excuse for them to not be throwing absolutely everything they have got into what is now the last ditch effort to conserve the Sumatran rhino.
Furthermore, what I was referring to with this point is the nonsense that you yourself wrote here:
"Firstly, the Northern white rhino story is a very welcome one in terms of publicity for NGOs and zoos (particularly SDZ and SDZSP). It highlights an ongoing struggle coordinated by several zoos to save a species, working together with multiple governments and NGOs involved in the process. It shows a will to save species and counteracts animal rights activists' attempts to undermine zoos' role in conservation, both in and ex situ."
Now you may not remember this but I actually was interested enough in the opinions of zoochatters on this subject of rhino conservation to make it the subject of a poll / thread which was actually very revealing about which species most people on this site believe should be prioritized :
Which rhino species should be prioritized in conservation ? (poll)
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toothlessjaws
Well-Known Member
@Ony
While I agree with you that the sumatran rhino should be of a higher priority than the NWR for all the reasons you've given, and I have in the past even argued as much, I think there is a common false assumption that there is always a competition between conservation projects and resources.
People are one of the biggest resources available in saving a species. And people dedicate their lives to saving species they love. Someone in Uganda for example is naturally going to feel passionately about saving the rhino species that belongs in their backyard. So its not like thats a resource can be forcefully shifted to another species on the other side of the world. You can take them money away from some people but they'll still dedicate their lives (just much less effectively) to saving what they love.
So really when we talk of diverting resources we mostly just mean money.
But not all species face the same hurdles. Right now the biggest issue facing the Sumatran rhinos that I can see is (Indonesian) bureaucracy. Not exactly a situation that can always be solved with money (legally).
And lets not forget that Dr Thomas Hildebrandt as the worlds leading specialist in rhinoceros (and elephant) reproduction and is involved with the conservation of both NWR's and Sumatran rhinoceros. I'm sure he'd argue his work with one species is not at the expense of the other. Indeed, from my understanding, just as with the NWR's, experts have been building up a library of genetic material from the living and deceased sumatran rhinoceros available to them. In fact just as with the NWR's Malaysia has made attempts at embryos. But again remember the Sumatrans are in a different situation. Unlike the white rhinoceros there has not been a continuous supply of zoo animals with which to study and master their reproductive biology.
Lastly, while its barely by much of a margin, the Sumatran rhinoceros is not yet functionally extinct. There is a group of animals in captivity and a history of breeding and proper care. Thus, the top priority for Sumatrans is not to explore experimental in-vitro fertilisation with dead founders. Its to breed the remaining pair(s) as much as possible, inbred or not, to create as many living females as possible to carry to term a new generation of rhinoceros be them created with reproductive technology or naturally with new founders brought in from the wild.
But my point is, fortunately people are already doing whatever they can to save both the Sumatran species and the Northern white rhinoceros (sub)species. I'm not sure there is a need to consolidate or pit one effort against the other.
While I agree with you that the sumatran rhino should be of a higher priority than the NWR for all the reasons you've given, and I have in the past even argued as much, I think there is a common false assumption that there is always a competition between conservation projects and resources.
People are one of the biggest resources available in saving a species. And people dedicate their lives to saving species they love. Someone in Uganda for example is naturally going to feel passionately about saving the rhino species that belongs in their backyard. So its not like thats a resource can be forcefully shifted to another species on the other side of the world. You can take them money away from some people but they'll still dedicate their lives (just much less effectively) to saving what they love.
So really when we talk of diverting resources we mostly just mean money.
But not all species face the same hurdles. Right now the biggest issue facing the Sumatran rhinos that I can see is (Indonesian) bureaucracy. Not exactly a situation that can always be solved with money (legally).
And lets not forget that Dr Thomas Hildebrandt as the worlds leading specialist in rhinoceros (and elephant) reproduction and is involved with the conservation of both NWR's and Sumatran rhinoceros. I'm sure he'd argue his work with one species is not at the expense of the other. Indeed, from my understanding, just as with the NWR's, experts have been building up a library of genetic material from the living and deceased sumatran rhinoceros available to them. In fact just as with the NWR's Malaysia has made attempts at embryos. But again remember the Sumatrans are in a different situation. Unlike the white rhinoceros there has not been a continuous supply of zoo animals with which to study and master their reproductive biology.
Lastly, while its barely by much of a margin, the Sumatran rhinoceros is not yet functionally extinct. There is a group of animals in captivity and a history of breeding and proper care. Thus, the top priority for Sumatrans is not to explore experimental in-vitro fertilisation with dead founders. Its to breed the remaining pair(s) as much as possible, inbred or not, to create as many living females as possible to carry to term a new generation of rhinoceros be them created with reproductive technology or naturally with new founders brought in from the wild.
But my point is, fortunately people are already doing whatever they can to save both the Sumatran species and the Northern white rhinoceros (sub)species. I'm not sure there is a need to consolidate or pit one effort against the other.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Good points made @toothlessjaws !
In my personal experience from what I've observed it is unfortunately true that in most cases conservation programes are indeed forced by finite resources into competition and sadly it is not always the most worthy causes that get the funding or support.
Again, my worry is not that the Ugandans want to save their rhino, that is understandable and commendable but rather that this effort and all the news surrounding it will in terms of the public globally detract from the momentum and effort that has been building in Asia.
Oh I quite agree with you that the principal problem in the effort to the Sumatran rhino is and has been for a number of decades bureaucratic intransigence on the part of the Indonesian authorities but I would argue that this is precisely why at this critical moment the spotlight simply must be shone on the effort to save the Sumatran rhino.
By giving the Sumatran rhino a greater profile through a media spotlight it puts the onus on the Indonesian authorities and applies pressure on them to deliver meaningful results in terms of conserving this species. As far as I'm aware the obscurity of the species to the public has always meant that the government has been able to drag and shuffle it's feet on the issue for far too long.
My worry / concern is that the effort to save the Northern White rhino will overshadow efforts in Indonesia with the Sumatran as the efforts in Africa with the white and black rhinos have always done. History tends to repeat itself and it is no different in conservation with a lot of problems we face and the historical legacies of these.
Moreover, all of the millions that will invariably poured into this project may be effectively wasted on a lost cause with which there is no guarantee of any success and can that ever be justified ?
Granted, there is never any guarantee of success in conservation (it isn't exactly assured with the Sumatran either) but we are here talking about very costly novel technology and techniques which have not been tried before and with the two individuals of a subspecies whose reproductive viability is apparently uncertain.
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toothlessjaws
Well-Known Member
Well in that sense then, I completely agree with you.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
For example, I have seen videos and posts popping up on social media about the Northern white rhino quite a lot over the past few years.
Without studies into this it is of course very hard to tell but I would be willing to bet that the majority of the public know more about the plight of that subspecies than even know that the Sumatran rhino exists.
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toothlessjaws
Well-Known Member
If I was to have a guess, the main reason for this would be because the situation with the NWR makes a much more engaging story to most. The narrative of only two left on earth and relying on cutting edge science to save them from extinction, is much more dramatic and attention grabbing than the often long-winded and complex story that is being put out there regarding the Sumatran species.
This is perhaps a symptom of the NGO's working with Sumatrans not wanting to put out information that might offend the Indonesian officials that hold the keys to success.