The last male, named Sudan, died at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya in 2018, where Najin and Fatu live under 24-hour guard. The reproduction programme is the majestic animals' last chance at survival. Neither Fatu nor Najin is capable of carrying a calf to term, so surrogate mothers for the embryos will be selected from a population of southern white rhinos. "She will remain a part of the programme, for example by providing tissue samples for stem cell approaches, which can be performed with minimal invasion," Stejskal said. In July, the consortium announced they had created three additional embryos of the subspecies, bringing the total to 12.īut the viable embryos all hail from the younger rhino and the programme is not without risks despite the care taken, said Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at Safari Park Dvur Kralovs, where Najin was born in 1989. The eggs were airlifted to a lab in Italy for fertilisation, development and preservation, using sperm from two different deceased males. They underwent a highly risky procedure carried out by a team of international vets, which saw them anaesthetised for almost two hours, and their eggs extracted using techniques that have taken years of research and development. Since 2019, the multinational consortium has collected eggs from Najin and Fatu for an assisted reproduction programme never before tried in rhinos. "Weighing up risks and opportunities for the individuals and the entire species rendered this decision without an alternative," Biorescue said in a statement. This leaves Najin's daughter Fatu-the only other northern white rhino on earth-as the sole donor for a programme trying to save the functionally extinct species. Citing risk and safety reasons, scientific consortium Biorescue said it had decided to retire the older of the two females, 32-year-old Najin, as a donor of egg cells for the ambitious project.
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