{"id":12069,"date":"2021-02-03T09:16:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T06:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=12069"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:24","slug":"a-glimmer-of-hope-for-northern-white-rhinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2021\/02\/03\/a-glimmer-of-hope-for-northern-white-rhinos\/","title":{"rendered":"A glimmer of hope for northern white rhinos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>No animal is closer to extinction than the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wwf.panda.org\/discover\/knowledge_hub\/endangered_species\/rhinoceros\/african_rhinos\/white_rhinoceros\/?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">northern white rhino<\/a>\u00a0in Africa with only two known surviving members of the species, a mother and a daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both are in captivity in Kenya and under constant guard from poachers. Yet the prospects of their species have long looked bleak as the two surviving females can no longer mate naturally for want of a male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Encouragingly, however, the efforts of scientists to produce embryos from the females\u2019 eggs and the frozen sperm of a male rhino that died in 2018 are bearing fruit. The scientists have just succeeded in creating two more embryos, which means they now have five at their disposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;embryos are stored at a laboratory in Cremona, Italy, and the plan now is to implant them into surrogate mothers in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c2020 was really a hard test for all of us, but giving up is not the mentality of any true scientist,\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/01\/27\/scientists-produce-embryos-in-race-to-save-northern-white-rhino\/?utm_source=flipboard&amp;utm_medium=syndicated&amp;utm_campaign=partnerfeed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">stresses<\/a>&nbsp;Thomas Hildebrandt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany who is the leader of the team tasked with the project. \u201cChristmas gave us a present: two embryos. And we are extremely happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet time is of the essence because the two living rhinos are both ageing and they will still need to serve a large role in saving their species even if they can\u2019t bear young themselves. \u201cWe are under time constraint because we want really a transfer of the social knowledge from the last existing northern white rhinos to a calf,\u201d Hildebrandt explains. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sustainability-times.com\/environmental-protection\/a-glimmer-of-hope-for-critically-endangered-northern-white-rhinos\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No animal is closer to extinction than the\u00a0northern white rhino\u00a0in Africa with only two known surviving members of the species, a mother and a daughter. Both are in captivity in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}