Embryo transfer could save northern white rhino population

Only two northern white rhinos exist today
An embryo transfer performed in September could help produce more
The transfer was the first success of its kind

Updated: Jan 24, 2024 / 05:28 PM EST

Najin, the oldest of the two northern white rhinos, is seen in a secured pen before undergoing the ovum pick-up procedure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy near Nanyuki, Kenya August 18, 2020. Ol Pajeta Conservancy/Rio The Photographer/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

(NewsNation) — The world’s first successful rhino embryo transfer could help save the dwindling northern white rhino from extinction.

Scientists and conservationists with the nonprofit BioRescue succeeded in impregnating a rhinoceros with a white rhino embryo that was produced in vitro from collected egg cells and sperm. The embryo was then transferred Sept. 24 to a southern white rhino surrogate mother at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, according to an official statement from BioRescue.

Only two northern white rhinos exist. The rhinos, Najin and Fatu, both live in the Kenya conservancy.

“The BioRescue team confirmed a pregnancy of 70 days with a well-developed 6.4 cm long male embryo,” the nonprofit wrote on Facebook Wednesday.

The northern white used to range over parts of Uganda, Chad, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

Poaching and a civil war that disrupted their homeland devastated the northern white rhino population, which is technically extinct in the wild.