Czech zoo hopes to save rare rhinos with Africa move - Feature

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

Prague - A Czech zoo plans on Saturday to move four extremely rare rhinos to a Kenyan reservation in a last-ditch effort to forestall their extinction. The four animals - two males and two females - belong to the northern white rhino subspecies that is presumed to have been wiped out in the wild by poachers.

Only eight, mostly old animals are known to live on earth at the moment - two in the Wild Animal Park in San Diego and six in the Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic.

The Czech zoo plans to fly the last four fertile northern white rhinos - females Fatu, 9, and Najin, 20, and males Suni, 29, and Sudan, 38 - to the privately-owned Ol Pejeta reservation in central Kenya in the hope that a change in their living environment will trigger their reproduction.

"Every time one was born it was a result of some change," zoo spokeswoman Jana Mysliveckova said.

Breeding the endangered subspecies in captivity has proved a struggle. Only four were born in Dvur Kralove in the north-eastern Czech Republic since the zoo began raising them in 1975. The last offspring was Fatu, born in 2000.

"On average we had one birth per decade. That is no success," said the zoo's chief zoologist, Pavel Moucha.

While in captivity, the females produce insufficient hormones needed for pregnancy. As a result, they are unattractive to the males, he explained.

Even if the animals do mate in captivity, low hormone levels can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the womb. Repeated attempts at artificial insemination have also failed.

"Assisted reproduction is not going to save this subspecies. It only delays the end," Moucha said.

Zoo officials still harbor hopes that a handful of northern white rhinos in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have survived poaching, and that they might be brought to the Ol Pejeta conservancy for breeding with the Czech group.

However, trackers failed to confirm the most recent sightings of three animals in Sudan in 2008.

"There are plans for a team to go in next year and try to confirm if there are northern white rhinos," conservancy spokeswoman Elodie Sampere said. "But for the moment we consider them extinct in the wild."

Moucha said it would be a success if the Dvur Kralove animals at least conserve their genes through crossbreeding with 11 southern white rhinos that live in the Ol Pejeta park.

The long journey is planned to start on what promises to be a frosty Saturday morning in Dvur Kralove, where the rhinos are to board heated trucks and be escorted by police to Prague's international airport.

A commercial cargo plane will make a special stop in the Czech capital to pick up the precious load, which should reach its destination around noon on Sunday.

Twenty-degree temperatures, fresh grass, corrals and a fenced-off run are ready for the rhinos at their new home, where they will be monitored and guarded, the zoo said.

It may take up to two years for the newcomers, three of them born in Czech captivity, to fully adjust to the new environment.

But the project also has its critics and opponents. It has sparked a scientific debate worldwide as well as a charged controversy at home.

A group of Czech activists highly critical of the current zoo leadership, Safari Archa 2007, has attacked the transfer as too dangerous for the priceless beasts.

"They take a risk with treasure," activist and former Dvur Kralove zoo employee Roman Komeda said. "Aside from Sudan, the oldest male, these animals have never seen Africa."

The activists fear, Komeda said, that poaching and disease could threaten the new arrivals - claims that are rejected by the zoo.

Some rhino groups, such as the International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino, view the Kenyan park as safe for the foursome but are skeptical about whether the move could solve their reproductive problems.

The critics see the project, whose total cost the zoo puts at 300,000 dollars, as a waste of money that could have been used on rhino-saving missions with greater odds of succeeding.

But the zoo officials are unwavering.

"I understand the opponents. It is risky," chief zoologist Moucha said. "But it is the only chance to help these rhinos."