Captive rhinos at heart of breeding programme

Published on Friday 18 April 2008 21:20

Further to your report on the bid to save rare animal species (17 April), I would like to add that this groundbreaking research concept allows the inclusion of infertile, captive northern white rhinos in a breeding programme and even permits frozen cell samples from dead individuals to be used.

I'd like to emphasise that due to the high-tech approach the only animals that will be involved are the remaining captive northern white rhinos in two zoos and not individuals living in the wild. The final goal is to create a stabile captive northern white rhino population.

The major advantage of the procedure is that only skin samples of the northern white rhinos are required. These will be joined with embryos of their southern counterpart to produce pure sperm and eggs derived from the northern white rhino.

(DR) THOMAS B HILDEBRANDT

Institute for Zoo & Wildlife

Research

Postfach 601103

Berlin