Eats, shoots - and thrives? IVF helps species back from brink

Najin and her daughter Fatu, the world's last two living northern white rhinos, inhabit an evolutionary twilight zone: the last living proof of a lineage that stretches back millions of years, but is functionally extinct.

- Hannah Deylin

But this week, scientists came a step closer to bringing them back from the brink by performing the first successful embryo transfer in a related white rhino species.

The goal of restoring a herd of northern white rhinos using a bank of frozen eggs, sperm and embryos and gene editing technologies may sound like hubris. But the team behind the project, and others, say that IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies (ART) could transform conservation efforts in some species and buffer against the devastating impacts of climate change and habitat loss.

"Scientists can offer to rewind some of these dramatic mistakes made by humans," said Prof Thomas Hildebrandt of Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin and head of the rhino BioRescue project. "We don't play God. We try to preserve what God has created. We only bring back what was on this planet and was destroyed by people." Hildebrandt views the technology as last-ditch insurance for "cornerstone" species such as the northern white rhino.