Only five northern white rhinos left on Earth and all to old to breed.

[Sunlei]

Now they freeze the eggs of a 40 yr old female in hopes of some future.

Nola is eating her morning meal of apples and grain and appears ready to take her antibiotic pills. After feeling poorly for a couple of weeks, she is moving around..

This is welcome news to Nola's devoted keepers at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. She is one of only five northern white rhinos left on Earth: three of the others are in a preserve in Kenya, and one is in a zoo in the Czech Republic.

Nola's recent illness, coming just weeks after the unanticipated death of Angalifu, the park's male northern white rhino, was a pointed reminder of the fragility of her species. At 40, even with care, Nola is near the end of her expected life span, and breeding is no longer seen as an option. Efforts in Kenya to mate the male and the two females have been unsuccessful.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-rhinos-extinction-20150124-story.html

[BlueCaliDem]

1. What a sad, sad state for the Northern White Rhinos.

I hope there's something they can do to stop their extinction. I hope they'll get the funding needed to produce more Northern White Rhinos or we'll lose them forever.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. While we're at it, we ought to see to stopping our own extinction,

along with that of most of the rest of the biosphere.

Actually, apparently they have frozen ova (and no doubt sperm), so I imagine that they could plant a fertilized white rhino ovum in the womb of a female of a closely related subspecies to serve as a foster mom, or who knows what might be done with their dna, or with cloning technologies? As long as there is an environment for them, our technological world stays intact, and we have the resolve to do it, I believe we can bring many such species back. We are in effect storing nature's codes when we preserve dna information.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Technology is really part of the problem, though

there are too many humans. We're too clever, and have been too successful. Human activity (clearcutting forests for agriculture, damming rivers for irrigation, logging, road-building, mining, fossil fuel extraction) is directly responsible for most habitat loss and species decline (along with hunting). Human activity in burning fossil fuels and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is responsible for climate change on what will probably be a catastrophic scale. Of course, this sort of climate-change driven mass extinction has happened several times before in the history of the planet, most notably the Permian extinction event, but there isn't much question that the current one has been accelerated by human behaviour. Want to slow it down (although probably, not avert it)? The answer is "fewer humans using fewer resources". I don't see the number of people on the planet dropping by 90% anytime soon, though.

[Jackpine Radical]

20. You're right.

[Omaha Steve]

2. When will poachers become extinct?

K&R!

[ND-Dem]

7. same time poverty becomes extinct

[navarth]

11. Yesterday, if I had the power to make it happen. nt

[Rozlee]

4. Can't we use some sort of cloning or artificial insemination technique to bring them back like

we're using on the DNA of that baby Woolly Mammoth that was found frozen? There are some extinct animals, like the Dodo bird (I know. Why would anyone want to bring back the Dodo bird?) that some museums and private collectors have stuffed in their possessions. Would it be possible to recreate them or have I just been watching too much Jurassic Park?

[Sunlei]

6. they can do that now but any animals would be poached because the market will buy the horns.

All rhinos are so endangered from poaching, even to find 'extra' females to carry the clones to term would probably be impossible today.

Elephant female to carry a mammoth clone to term, may be impossible.

The species North American mammoth and African/ Indian elephant split off so long ago. They have evolved major differences. Even African and Indian elephants can't be crossbred with success.

[catchnrelease]

10. Just need the embryo

Embryo transplanting has been done since at least the early '80s with good success. I assisted (on the animal care end) with a team that transplanted embryos from one endangered species of antelope to another species that was not endangered, and not related other than both being antelope.

The specialists have the technique for that part of it down pretty well. The problem is getting an embryo, so someone would need to get that far first. Obviously it can be done with humans, so maybe there is someone working on the fertilization of rare or near extinct species.

It would not surprise me that a modern elephant could carry a mammoth clone. I'm sure someone will try it someday.

[Sunlei]

15. we've done embryo transplants for decades but the surrogate has to be a 'similar' species.

like with your antelopes, the 2 species probably could be crossbred naturally with success.

Process for a mammoth embryo requires replacing the DNA in an elephant egg with a mammoth's genome.

There are so many genetic differences between African & Indian elephants, even those 2 species can not be crossbred with success.

Many more genetic differences between mammoths and elephants. even their blood chemistry is vastly different.

Would love to see scientists try dna with other common north American ice age animals that probably still could 'crossbreed' naturally. humans, rodents, horses that would give creationists a cow attack

[catchnrelease]

19. You're correct

It's not the same thing as just an embryo transplant for the mammoth/elephants. I was thinking more of the rhinos, which I didn't clearly state. Ie: trying to get an embryo from saved eggs/sperm from the old rhinos and transplant into White Rhinos from other areas.

This isn't exactly the same either but some work has also been done with trying to 'recreate' so to speak the Tarpan, which might be similar to your last comment.

[Sunlei]

21. To me its really sad how much diversity in all species the earth has lost.

Even with mammoths, they probably could have survived the Ice age changes like horses and humans did.

If they had habitat to migrate to without hunting pressure. It is very easy to push a species that has one young a year to extinction.

Today Russians dredge the seas near 'Beringa' and net up millions and millions of mammoth tusks. There is a market, china buys them and carves the ivory.

Those lands must have been a glorious sight with herds of millions of grazing animals.

[LeftyMom]

16. It's complicated.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/125-species-revival/zimmer-text

The short answer is that technically maybe we can (the results tend not to be long lived, healthy animals) but that unless we address the habitat loss, hunting, etc that led to the extinction there probably isn't much point.

In the case of the rhinos in question, even if we could clone all of them that's probably an insurmountable genetic bottleneck- there just isn't enough diversity there to reestablish a healthy population, even if efforts to breed them were careful. See white tigers as an example of what captive breeding of a small population results in after a few generations- it's not pretty.

[packman]

5. And the world becomes

a bit less, a bit sadder, a bit poorer.

[The2ndWheel]

8. Just another attempt to make ourselves feel better

Even if it could happen, where are they going to exist? In their natural habitat? No. In a zoo. So what's the point in trying to save them? Save them for what? Us.

Either way, from poaching to a zoo existence, it's for us, not them.

[catchnrelease]

12. Other options

Zoos are not the only other option. Of course these animals should be able to live in their natural habitat with out being wiped out, that's the best choice. But there has been a move to take multiple pairs of rhinos, I want to say it was like 30 animals, from areas in Africa to huge grassland reserves in Australia and let them live there and hopefully keep them going. These were not tourist parks or hunting reserves, but places for them to live in a situation as close to their natural habitat as possible.

I don't remember if the idea was that someday maybe their offspring could go back to Africa if they can ever get a handle on the poaching etc. Honestly I don't hold much hope for that but who knows.

[Aldo Leopold]

9. The final chapter in Bill Bryson's book "A short history of nearly everything"

gives a powerful and moving perspective on human-caused extinctions. We have, to put it mildly, a shitty track record when it comes to curbing our own self-interests for the sake of the persistence of other species.

[The2ndWheel]

13. Why would we do that?

We can't physically fly. We can't physically travel at 50mph. We don't like limits on our self-interest.

We want humanity to progress. That requires an increased control of nature. We can't curb our self-interest for the sake of other species, because then we can't progress. It's a finite planet. Existence has limits. One of them is that if we get more, the rest of life must have less. We can't escape it. We want to though, because it's a limit.

[LanternWaste]

14. "What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men

"What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument...'

[moondust]

17. If a billionaire comes along...

How long might it take to perfect the process?

"It's really a fundraising issue," Loring said. "If a billionaire comes along and wants to help, maybe five years."

Things like this might be more achievable if people didn't have to wait around for a billionaire to come along. If more people had more money rather than a tiny few having it all, more worthy causes might get adequately funded through private donations. Another down side to extreme wealth concentration.