FRANCE: The soon-to-be-extinct northern white rhino is yet another sad indictment of human greed and ignorance.No meteor from outer space, no unstoppable pandemic, no heroic, ultimately futile last stand.
With just five northern white rhinos left on earth, the animal’s end is inevitable.
Scientists and conservationists hope advancements in genetics and in vitro fertilisation might allow for its test tube resurrection in the future, but before that the northern whites will die, one by one, in the next few years.
“We are down to five, so they are very close to extinction, perhaps in a few years,” Jan Stejskal of the Dvur Kralove Zoo in Czech Republic says, which, thanks to acquisitions in the 1970s, owns the remaining northern whites.
“I still believe there is a hope we will be able to save them.“The best we can do now is harvest sperm and egg samples for future in vitro fertilisation, and wait until the time the techniques are developed enough to give us a good chance of reproduction.”
