“The Demise of the Northern White Rhinoceros”

RAFFERTY:
It sounds like we could possibly shortcut this process if we had a time machine, [and] went back 15, 20 years and simply just protected the habitat. But since time has passed and we've lost these, these animals, it's almost like the human care aspect has to be leveraged at this time. Just given the situation. But it may be easier just to protect the habitat at the right time, and then we can avoid some of these things.

DURRANT:
That's exactly right, and that's a very important point, and the lesson we have learned is for those animals that still have viable populations in the wild, now is the time, not next week or next year or 10 years from now. We have to protect those animals now.
If we had done that, like you say, if we had that time machine, we went back and we protected those animals, we wouldn't be in this situation now. So, the lesson there is every animal needs to be protected now. We can't wait.

Hi, I'm John Rafferty. I'm the editor for Earth Sciences at Encyclopedia Britannica. In this audio story, we will explore the tragic demise of the Northern white rhinoceros, a functionally extinct subspecies of Africa's white rhinoceros. In 2018 the last male Northern white rhinoceros passed away. Only two members of the entire subspecies remain. Two females named Nanjin and Fatu. When these animals die, the Northern white rhino will become extinct.

Before succumbing to such fatalism, there is some hope that scientists and wildlife officials can pull the group back from extinction, but only if new and expensive efforts to save it are successful. Today, we will examine Northern white rhinos and their relatives, the Southern white rhinos, which are more numerous, and how we might enlist the Southern tribe to help grow the population of the Northern group.

To help us understand the challenges the Northern white rhino faces, I reached out to Dr. Barbara Durrant, the director of reproductive sciences at San Diego Zoo Global. Durrant has been working with these animals on the front lines.

DURRANT:
I am a reproductive physiologist by training. I have a PhD in reproductive physiology, and I was lucky enough to come to San Diego Zoo Global to do a postdoc fellow (postdoctoral fellowship) and eventually became the director of reproductive sciences. My work encompasses birds, mammals, and reptiles, but I have a special emphasis on mammals. And so, I work with gametes of sperm, eggs, embryos, and assisted reproduction. Others in my laboratory work with STEM cells, with endocrine disruption, with hormone monitoring. So everything involved with all aspects of reproduction.

The Northern white rhino ranged throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Chad, and that area of Northern Africa. And we really don't know much about that, that subspecies species until about 1960, when they did a census, and they were about 2,300 Northern white rhinos in that area at that time. And by 1984, there were only about 15 left, and that was because of civil unrest in the area, wars going on, and poaching. At that time when they discovered there were only about 15 left, they immediately started protecting them. This is, this is the first time they had officially been protected. And by 1994, they were up to (10 years later) they were up to 30 individuals. However, unfortunately poaching increased again, and by 2004 there are only about 20 left and at that time. Well, in 2006 they officially were extinct in the wild.

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In terms of size, the White rhinoceros is the largest rhinoceros species on Earth, measuring 4 metres (13 feet) long and nearly 2 metres (or 7 feet) high, and weighing up to 1,600 kg (or 3,500 pounds). Historically, the species has been divided into two subspecies—the northern white rhino and the southern white rhino—but comparative anatomy and DNA analysis suggest that the two groups are in fact different species. For the purposes of this episode, however, let’s continue to call them subspecies.

There are some common characteristics among all rhino species. They have one or two horns on the upper surface of the snout (white rhinos have two), and these horns are not true horns but are made of keratin, a fibrous protein found in hair. Female rhinos do not become sexually mature until about age six, and gestation is long (16 months in most species). Rhinos also give birth to only one calf at a time, and the period between calves can range from 2 to 4.5 years. All of these features taken together have made the conservation and recovery of the northern white rhinoceros very, very difficult.

DURRANT:
Gestation is about 16 to 17 months in duration, and they do have a two-to-three-year inter calf interval. So, they, if left to their own devices with the proper mates, then they'll reproduce every two-to-three years and they don't become, the females don't become sexually mature until they're about five or six. They their first average age of first reproduction is eight or 10 years of age. They live to about 40-to-50-years-old in managed care, less in their native habitat, because of predation and drought and, you know, lack of food, those kinds of environmental factors that might affect them. They start reproducing when they're eight or 10 years of age and they may reproduce up until their mid-thirties if they continue to regularly calve. The oldest female that we know of that has calved was 41, so they can reproduce for a long time, but not many calves in their lifetime.

But in human care, they have reproduced very poorly, and the factors for that are unknown. Some of those could be the diet that they were being fed in, in human care, in zoological settings. And some of them could be just that we had such a small population that there wasn't enough mate choice and the females unfortunately were older when we were trying to work with them. The two females that we had in most recently in human care here in San Diego, we're too old to reproduce by the time we actually received them into our habitat.

The white rhino is the only rhinoceros in which males are noticeably larger than females. The white rhino is a grazing species and has a broad square muzzle. It prefers short grasses and rests in the shade. Also it tends to be paler other rhinoceroses, which accounts for its common name. It lives in Africa in groups of up to 10 individuals. In terms of conservation, the white rhino species as a whole is considered “near threatened” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), but the difference between the northern and southern groups requires a bit more detail, as Dr, Durrant explains:

DURRANT:
For the Southern white rhino, when their populations around the turn of last century around the early 1900s, there were only about 100 Southern white rhinos left in mostly in South Africa, the country of South Africa. And then IUCN which establishes the status of species declared them endangered, and then the governments of those countries, especially South Africa, started protecting those animals, with putting a lot of effort, a lot of financial effort into preserving the species, and they rebounded up to some estimates--we're up to 18,000 animals from a hundred. So, a tremendous of retrenched recovery because they got poaching under control, and that was the primary reason for their demise that their initial declined to a hundred, so they were protecting them.

Unfortunately, we know in South Africa, especially poaching of the Southern white rhino is on the increase, and that population is starting to decline again. The Northern white rhino had a different history, in that, as we talked about just a few minutes ago, it was civil war primarily and unrest war in those countries and the animals were unfortunately killed often by the armies that were, that were battling each other. They were caught in crossfire, or they were poached for their meat or their horn. And so that war really was a primary factor in the Northern white rhino getting to such a low number that it really was almost unrecoverable at that point. When that happened and they became extinct in the wild, there were so few animals that had been brought into human care and they were older animals. Some of them were older animals. We just didn't have the numbers that you could recover a population from. So, a hundred animals was sufficient. Half a dozen animals was not sufficient to recover a species.

By 2020, the northern white rhino’s population was two animals, specifically two females---a mother and daughter (Nanjin and Fatu) at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. White rhinos are functionally extinct, that is their numbers are so low that the species does not affect the ecosystem around it. You can learn more about this topic by listening to the Understanding Functional Extinction episode in this podcast series.

The last known remaining male northern white rhinoceros died in 2018, so to save the subspecies conservationists harvested some of the remaining viable eggs from each female in August 2019. Then they fertilized them with sperm from male northern white rhinos that had been collected previously. So far, three viable embryos have been frozen to allow advancements in rhino embryo transfer to catch up. Conservationists plan to place these embryos in the wombs of female southern white rhinos, which will act as surrogate mothers and carry the young to term.

Dr. Durrant explained this process and some of the problems associated with it.

RAFFERTY:
The Northern white rhino is currently without males, and there's a number of organizations that are attempting to bring them back from the brink of extinction here. So, although the population is currently without males, how are we going to conserve the Northern white rhino? What are some of the plans that conservation organizations and research institutes have for this subspecies?

DURRANT:
That's a very good question and a complicated answer, because there are only two females left, and those two females have been deemed by veterinary analysis to be incapable of carrying a pregnancy. So, artificial insemination of those females is, is not part of the plan. Actually, them becoming pregnant in any way is not part of the plan at this point. One of the females is, is 21 years old, and the other is 10 years older. Her mother's 10 years older, so she's about 31. Those ages are not necessarily a deterrent, except that the younger one has never had a calf. So, an animal to become pregnant at that age if she has never had a calf before is very, very difficult. So, we don't count on those females. Now, there is a group that is collecting eggs from those living females and attempting to do in-vitro maturation, in-vitro fertilization, and in-vitro embryo development for the purpose of them doing embryo transfer, taking those pure Northern white rhino embryos and putting them into Southern white rhino surrogates.

We are working with a Southern white rhino here at our facility, studying them in great detail, and we have learned a lot about their reproductive cycle, their estrous cycle. We have learned to control that reproductive cycle with hormone treatments to get them to ovulate in a timely manner, so we can time their ovulation and do artificial insemination with these females. And we have produced two calves by artificial insemination, one frozen semen and one with chilled semen. So, we're starting to understand in great detail what that cycle, that estrus cycle, is and how we can manipulate it in the gentlest possible way to be able to work with these animals and get them pregnant. So, we're working with a Southern white as a model for the Northern white. In other labs here in San Diego, we have Northern white rhino living cell lines in our frozen zoo.

So, those are samples that were taken from Northern white rhinos when they were living, and we have stored those, and we're now have taken them out of deep freeze and we are taking them back in time to STEM cells. And now we can take them forward again and redirect them through the stages that would lead up to their formation of gametes, sperm and eggs. Once we have accomplished that, which is a very long and very complex program, then we will be able to do in vitro fertilization with this sperm and the eggs that we produce in the lab. And then coming back to the reproductive sciences lab, we will have worked out the techniques in the Southern white rhino for in-vitro maturation, in-vitro fertilization, embryo development and embryo transfer.

It's complicated primarily by the anatomy of the female. The cervix, which you must navigate through to deposit sperm in the appropriate place is very large and very complex. And so, it requires specialized instrumentation to navigate through the cervix. And so, we have been able to do that, but we realized that when we do embryo transfer, that cervix is going to be different than it is when the female is in estrus. It will be a different consistency, and so we are working with a local university and they are developing a robotic embryo transfer tool that we'll be able to navigate through that very torturous cervix robotically, so that we can do that without damaging the tissue and without compromising the integrity of the cervix at that stage. So, that will be when we would do an embryo transfer in rhino, it would be about 10 days after she's in estrus so that cervix is no longer under the influence of estrogen during estrus and which softens the cervix and makes it easier to navigate. Ten days later, estrogen is gone. We now have progesterone, which will harden and close that cervix. So, we're working on that. So, that's, that's a mechanical complication that we have.

As far as creating or producing those embryos (so sperm, eggs and embryos in the lab) at each stage there has to be in-vitro conditions met that we don't even know what they are. We have to develop those. We have to experiment extensively to determine how do you culture these cells? How do you produce the STEM cells? How do you keep the STEM cells alive? How do you reprogram them with certain factors to direct their differentiation back to sperm and eggs? Then, how do you keep those sperm and eggs alive in the lab? What culture media do you need for in-vitro maturation of those oocytes? What culture media do you need to fertilize them in-vitro? Culture media for every species that's ever been studied is a major hurdle, because every species needs very, very specific requirements, and we don't know what those are. We don't know what the uterine environment is at different stages of embryo development for any species. So, we have to experiment, and extensive experimentation, with different culture media, with different proteins, with different hormones, with different energy sources. So, that's a big part of the complication of this project is all the different culture media that, we'll have to develop along the way.

San Diego Zoo Global has stated that our end goal is a herd, a self-sustaining herd, of Northern white rhinos back in their native habitat. That's the end goal for us, not the first Northern white rhino calf, not even the second or third or sixth Northern white rhino calf. That's not the goal. The goal is to create a population that can sustain itself, back in its native habitat. That will occur long after I'm gone and all of us sitting here are gone. But we're starting it now, and I feel confident that sometime long after I'm gone this will come to fruition. And what's important about this project is not only saving the Northern white rhino, but the demonstration of science and how science informs conservation and how science is absolutely essential for conservation. Now, when we talk about returning animals to the wild, of course, we have to have a safe place to return them to. And conservation in the wild is absolutely essential for this to, for any species, to persist long term.

If the northern white rhino cannot be saved, what then? Sure, there are other rhinoceroses, some 5 or 6 species (depending upon whether you consider white rhinos one or two), but about half of these are considered critically endangered by the IUCN, and the total population of all the rhinoceros species combined is probably less than 30,000.

If we lose the northern white rhino, one could argue that it’s another step closer to the end of this group of mammals—and if we lose rhinos altogether, we lose an animal “type” that most people have a great respect and affection for.

For example, along with the leopard, the lion, the elephant, and the Cape buffalo, the rhinoceros is one of the “Big Five” animals of Africa. This term, describing the five most challenging animals to hunt, was originally coined by big-game hunters during Africa’s colonial era more than 100 years ago. Regardless of how ethical you believe big-game hunting is, rhinos have taken their place among animals respected for their size and ferocity. “Big Five” remains popular among today’s tourists who are far more likely to shoot these animals with a camera than with a gun.

Furthermore, even if you did not grow up in Africa or tropical Asia, rhinos are animals you’ve heard of, you’ve seen pictures of, and perhaps you’ve even seen at a zoo. There’s a good chance that (along with elephants, bears, and giraffes) rhinos occupy that part of your mind that comes to life when someone mentions the word “animal.”

The loss of the northern white rhino, should it happen, should be a reminder to all of us that rhinos at-large are under threat—and that even those animals that we loved when we were children—you know, the ones we thought would always be around for our children and grandchildren—are not safe from modern life.

RAFFERTY:
Beyond the aesthetic reasons for saving the Northern white rhino, Dr. Durrant noted a few of the practical aspects of their conservation that might be overlooked.

DURRANT:
Every species has a place in the world in its habitat. We didn't even understand all the ways that the Northern white and the Southern white rhino interact with the plants and the animals in their ecosystems, but we know that every species in every ecosystem is essential for the proper functioning of that ecosystem. We believe very strongly that we have to preserve ecosystems, or we're going to lose the entire planet and everything on it. So, some people might say, well, there's the Southern white rhino. Why spend all this time and money and effort on the Northern white rhino, which is a subspecies of the Southern white rhino? Well, because it occupied a very different ecosystem, and it evolved over many, many thousands of years. They evolved in their native habitat, and they have a special place, and an important place, in that ecosystem. So, that's one important point that every species is worth saving. There's nothing that doesn't have a purpose. And another fact, the thing that I think is important for people to understand that we can do this science in the lab and in animals in human care, but we must also at the same time preserve those animals in their native habitat. So it's, it's a dual approach. One cannot exist without the other.

What can we do to turn this situation around?

There are several things that each of us can do to save these creatures:

Give to international anti-poaching organizations, such as:
• the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF): a non-profit with offices in Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the U.S. that trains anti-poaching rangers in several countries.

• The Ol Pejeta Conservancy: a non-profit in East Africa that provides a sanctuary for white rhinos and black rhinos. It raises awareness through community outreach programs and trains anti-poaching rangers in Kenya.

Also, give to other environmental organizations that work to protect individual threatened species—such as the World Wildlife Fund, African Wildlife Foundation, and Save the Rhino International.

Educate yourself on the status of international wildlife trafficking laws, and encourage your leaders to support laws that ban trade in wildlife parts, such as rhino horn, and actively provide resources (funds and training) to help enforce and strengthen good laws (such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species [or CITES]) already on the books.

Support candidates at local and national levels who understand the value of protecting species and their habitats and who understand how poaching, pollution, land-use conversion and urban sprawl, and climate change contribute to the loss of wildlife and their habitat.

After listening to today’s podcast, I hope you learned something new about the challenges of keeping the northern white rhino alive and viable, as well as the conservation status of rhinos in general.
Furthermore, I hope you also gained an appreciation for the distance scientists and wildlife officials are willing to go to save species, especially one that belongs to a group of animals that most of us harbor a great affection for.

You can find anything you might have missed on Britannica.com. Learn more about extinction and its causes from our article located at 64.176.36.150/science/extinction-biology.

There you can also find other parts of this podcast series. More information on the white rhinoceros, poaching, CITES, and endangered species can be found at 64.176.36.150.

The Demise of the Northern White Rhinoceros. Story by John Rafferty. Produced by Kurt Heintz. A special thanks to Dr. Barbara Durrant of the San Diego Zoo for her contributions to this episode. This is the seventh part of the “Postcards from the 6th Mass Extinction” series. This program is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.