Northern White Rhino's going back to Africa

05-01-2010

Great News

Perphaps 2010 will be year of the Northern W. Rhino!

Please keep us all posted

-n

06-01-2010

@docend24
Affirmative. The Russian helicopter pilots have confirmed their presence. It is now up to the FFI/Ol Pejeta folks to follow up, track them down and capture them for relocation to Laikipia district.

This in itself is testament that the last ditch attempt was the way to go. It would never have happened if and when the best hopefuls would have been scattered left right and center. There is yet a window of opportunity here!

@Jana
Re Dvur historical management: what you underlined is true, however was not common knowledge nor practice at the time. To illustrate this, the SD-WAP F1/F2 currently still does not breed.

So, when the second group was sent out to SD-WAP - that was already at a time when the F1/F2 was not performing/breeding -. That in hindsight might probably have been averted.

Even so, the Congo GOVT./Garamba Park put sugar in the oil machine to have it veer off the road. If not, we would have had 30+8+ 3+ northern whites in 2003/4 at Ol Pejeta to breed from.


Re further northern whites in Sudan: it might still be (allthough if and before we have to remain sceptic)! Whereas much of the range has been surveyed from the air, ground surveys have not yet been as thorough. Ol Pejeta has some pretty sharp trackers ....!!!

06-01-2010

I believe the reason Dvur could not maintain their initial breeding success was because, unlike with Southern Whites, there was little/no opportunity over time to exchange and bring in unfamiliar partners to alter their group composition in order to stimulate sexual behavour. So these rhinos 'know each other' too well and have probably little(or no) interest in mating anymore. This is fairly common in zoos with some species -where longterm partners which have bred previously 'lose interest' and cease to do so until a change of partners stimulates sexual interest again. The change of location to Africa, -wide spaces, new terrain, hot climate- may help redress this BUT the possible addition of the 'Sudanese 3' (an amazing find) if they can be captured successfully would perhaps be even more important (irrespective of their sexes) as they are completely unknown to the 'Dvur 4' I remain optimistic!!

06-01-2010

I don`t think the brother-sister-relationship between the rhinos in Dvur was the only problem. I think there has been natural mating in the recent past, and one or both females have been artificially inseminated. All without sucess, although the semen was viable. Remember that the fantastic breeding sucess of the indian rhinos in San Diego only started after the animals were moved from the Zoo to the Wild Animal Park. With the much more natural condition in Kenya and the addition of 3 new rhinos, I am getting more optimistic!

This is a great example that you should never, EVER give up hope and work to make the impossible happen. Yes, it`s waaaaay too early to hope the subspecies may survive into the next century, but it`s looking a whole lot better today then just 4 weeks ago!

06-01-2010

A bit off the topic:
Vis a vis white rhino reproductive behaviour: I concur that sibling behaviour was a deciding factor in non-breeding. Another might have been that closely related cows seem to align their cyclicity (to the point neither does cycle ..., it happens with other rhino species). In the absence of stimulation from multiple bull partners a menopause sets in ... Lastly, breeding cows are almost NEVER related (in the wild) ... In captivity, all to often cows are kept for prolonged periods together and thus never breed (even when just imported).

The above seems to happen across quite a few collections with F1 generation requiring shifting in order to stimulate breeding. Thankfully, we are now in a position to understand rhino reproductive behaviour and act before the time is more than ripe ...


Now, back on .... wait for further developments soon!

06-01-2010

i totally support repatriation of rhino to africa for a variety of reasons. my argument has always been however that the situation declined to "last ditch effort" some 10-20 years ago and should have been initiated much, much earlier. when a population gets as small as this, consolidation of the population far outweighs the risk of disease outbreaks. likewise, returning the species to as natural an environment as possible is also integral. i think we far underestimate the influence natural habitat has on animal behaviour.

there is a lot of talk about sibling relationships. for what its worth since rhino don't live in family groups, i don't believe that the animals see eachother as "siblings". this is anthropomorphism on our part. i think moreso, they simply have so much close contact with one another, that it suppresses any mating behavior that usually occurs when two rhino of the opposite sex cross paths. i may be being pedantic, but i suspect its more a case of animals conditioned to eachothers presence, which is unnatural - rather than one particular animal viewing another as related.

thus, being far apart from eachother in a preserve, something even an open range zoo can only do to a limited extent - is a reasonable cause for being slightly more optimistic.

add some additional animals and things look a smidge better still.

but - it breaks my heart that so many potential founder rhino have been wasted over the last two decades and i don't have particularly high hopes. there really isn't much in the way of gene pool here. i suppose the best case scenario is that a number of births occur in this semi wild population and that population is supplemented with cloned NWR from zoos in the future.

06-01-2010

Sounds strange, rhinos bear only one calf, so siblings never encounter each other!

In any case, anybody knows some written source of these rhinos seen in Sudan?

06-01-2010

[QUOTE=Jurek7;271790]Sounds strange, rhinos bear only one calf, so siblings never encounter each other! QUOTE]

The sibling behaviour-platonic relationship between unrelated non-mature rhinos is a mechanism that prevents inbreeding. It becomes expressed when white rhinos come into captivity at 2-3 years or are born in captivity stay together into adulthood and (then) do not breed.

Mostly, this is with F1 and F2 generation, however if you look at all the breeding data you will find this too expressed in newly immigrated wild-wild white rhinos as is the case in e.g. Knowsley Safari - first batch from S.Africa or Monarto, Australia.

An example of an historically good breeding herd affected with this in EU is SBB-Hilvarenbeek where all the F1 females did not breed untill the older bulls were all removed, a new much younger bull was eventually integrated. Till date only one female has conceived and recently had a calf. But I am convinced that in order to have a major portion of the F1 generation breed most if not all former associations between closely related cows has to be broken up.

06-01-2010

It is being kept under wraps to not alert the wrong folk ... and allow the staff to stage a capture operation (no date set).

06-01-2010

White rhino, unlike other species, are herd/group animals.

'Sibling' relationship may be anthropormorphic but is often used for want of a better term. Certainly platonic/nonbreeding relationships do arise in many species.

But as Yassa pointed out above, the Dvur Rhinos have not bred for other reasons and despite AI attempts as well. Hopefully these long overdue changes to their environment/social grouping haven't come too late...

06-01-2010

It is even in czech mainstream newspapers.

07-01-2010

phoenix,

The reasoning for no/yes last ditch has been precipitated only due to Dvur's intervention. As I observed before there has never been any love lost on the Congolese authorities to effectively protect the northern white rhinos.

Why no sooner a rescue op.? Dvur really tried before the 2003 term just prior to when the 2nd recent big poaching scandal had the fans. The northern white pop. had been hovering at the 30+/- mark for more than a decade .... and the Garamba park was never able to withstand any prolonged poaching without outside funding and technical back-up. It seems kinda sad that - in hindsight - WWF never put the brake on and demanded D.R. Congo COOPERATE with regional rhino authorities in IUCN/SSC to relocate part of the population elsewhere (something that is a more than sensible approach when a population is the low and so beset with frequent in-roads in pop. increase ....).

Perhaps, it is a firm reminder to us all that we should do our utmost and establish back-up populations ex situ, in situ, in semi-captive or whatever when any species is restricted to one locale only. Hopefully, IUCN may take this policy further ... is all I can say.

Genetics: indeed the diversity is rather low at 4+3 (probably some relatedness in there too). Apart, biological materials have been preserved for several other northern whites in Dvur and San Diego (to enable broadening the genetics base ... if only marginally). However, even the southern whites were down to 20+/- in the early 1900's and now there is 17,500.

However, I agree ... it could and should have been much sooner. I just like to make it clear that Dvur zoo people were never ever the stumbling block.

Sadly, even EAZA and some US captive rhino folks have opposed this last ditch effort. .... I do not care there ... as I suppose the money was donated by third sources anyway ... and so the deal does not lose any other more promising rhino conservation projects any cash.

K.B.

07-01-2010

Presumably the ex Dvur 4 animals and the Sudanese 3 wild animals cannot be related at all, but I know that one of the ex Dvur females is the daughter of one of the two males.

I agree that the Southern Whites' success could, with the right management and considerable luck, still be replicated even with this tiny remnant of Northerns.

07-01-2010

Pertinax and other ZooChat friends,

One has to add on to the 4+3 the (both extant and deceased) individual northern whites whose genetic materials have been lodged in the 2 gene banks at CRES and/or IZW.

I know it aint much nor ideal and technically speaking one would wish for a minimum 20+ unrelated founders (but even with the Garamba club the measure of relatedness was already building up ...), but that is just wishful thinking and non-realistic as of now.

18-03-2010

Did people pick up on this site yet, worth checking every now and then;

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