Northern white rhino could be saved from extinction after IVF breakthrough

Decades of rampant poaching have left the northern white rhino on the brink of extinction – with rhino horn fetching up to £40,000 a kilo on the black market.

There are now just two female northern white rhinos left – but a new IVF breakthrough could bring the species back from the brink.

Scientists have used IVF to create viable embryos using the sperm of northern white rhinos.

They believe that the embryos could be transferred to female southern white rhinoceroses, who would give birth to hybrid calves.

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Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin said it will be a race against time, ‘Taking into account 16 months pregnancy, we have a little more than a year to have a successful implantation.’

‘We are quite confident with the technology we have developed.’

Stuart Pimm of Duke University says, ‘This is a very ambitious, very brave last-ditch effort to save some of the genetics of a spectacular animal.’