The situation facing the Northern white rhino is of grave concern. There have been no actual rhino sightings for several years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Garamba National Park. Only old, vague signs have been reported, and at best there are no more than a handful of animals left. A few elderly, non-reproductive animals live in two zoos in the US and in the Czech Republic.

The scientific community has had a long and sometimes spirited debate about the role of assisted genetic technologies, such as cloning and its variants, in saving endangered species. Professor Millar proposes a very ambitious, but impractical solution to the extinction crisis facing the Northern white rhino. While the chimera technique may have been successful with mice, it is an enormous leap to generalise this success to a large, long-lived vertebrate like a rhino. Endangered species conservation always emphasises preserving genetic variability that will be sufficient to allow a population to adapt to changes in its environment and, in this case, for a Northern white rhino to remain a Northern white rhino. No matter what high tech approach might be used, there are too few Northern white rhinos at this point to sustain a genetically viable population because inbreeding inevitably would occur. Additionally, it is well known that these approaches are not efficient, even in common laboratory animals, and traditional cloning produces offspring with various birth defects. Lastly, the proposed approach also rests on the success of transferring the ‘manipulated’ embryos between rhinos, a highly technical feat that has never been accomplished in any rhino species.

Secondly, it is not clear what agreement has been reached about the future of the chimera rhinos, even if the project is successful. In our opinion, the funding should be conditional on the translocation of any resulting viable Northern white rhinos to one of its former range countries. Garamba may still not be an option, but perhaps Uganda or Kenya might be able to offer a suitable home.

Of equal concern is that this proposed experiment fails to address the reasons why Northern white rhinos have reached the verge of extinction. As reporter Michael McCarthy explained in his related article in The Independent, Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered from repeated incursions from the janjaweed militia and now the Lord’s Resistance Army. Manageable, containable subsistence poaching in the Park for bushmeat has been replaced by full-scale poaching for rhino horn and elephant ivory. As has been well documented, a rescue attempt of five Northern white rhinos in 2005 failed due to political problems. The organisation African Parks, under country coordinator José Kalpers, has had a mandate to manage Garamba since September 2005, but since only old signs of possibly four Northern white rhinos, were seen in a survey in August 2005, the likelihood of any animals surviving is small.

We believe that it likely is too late to save the Northern white rhino. Rather we should learn from this tragedy to protect the remaining five rhino species. The International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino International are committed to using precious conservation funds to stop the root causes of species loss while there is still time. While we also endorse all scientific approaches to conserving endangered species, we must be rational about using only techniques that have a strong chance of success and which would, in this case, produce healthy, genetically viable offspring. Experiments such as the one proposed by Professor Millar routinely attract a great deal of media attention, interestingly all speculative before generating any biological data. We believe that your readers should know that, to-date, the proposed technologies have not contributed to the management or conservation of any wildlife species. This certainly will remain the case for the Northern (and Southern) white rhino, where the highest priority remains protecting natural habitat and eliminating other human-caused threats.

Susie Ellis, Ph.D.                          Cathy Dean
Executive Director                         Director
International Rhino Foundation      Save the Rhino International

http://www.savetherhino.org/eTargetSRINM/site/995/default.aspx