SO how exactly do you save an almost extinct rhinoceros? Turns out, a test tube baby rhino could be the solution, being sought by experts on three continents. But it won’t be easy.

    Keepers at world-renowned San Diego Zoo in the United States announced last week that Angalifu, one of its two northern white rhinos, had died at age 44.

    That leaves only five other members of the species in the world: one female in California, one in the Czech Republic, and two females and one male — the sole remaining on the planet — in Kenya.

    The trouble is, four of the five are already on their last legs — being in their 40s — for a species with an average age of 43. Only one, a female in Kenya, is still young, having been born in 2000.

    “It is seriously going to be an uphill battle. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” said Randy Rieches, curator of mammals for the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

    “We’re looking at a bunch of different options,” including in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, he said.

    The real problem, he said, is in Africa, where rhinos were hunted for decades. Ten years ago there were known to be some 30 animals living wild in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

    Aware that they were threatened, conservationists organized for a handful of them to be transported to Kenya — but in the end the DRC authorities blocked the move, saying the animals should be kept in the country. “That proved to be a very poor decision, because they weren’t able to protect them because of the remoteness” of the park, said Rieches.

    The poachers took swift advantage of the decision.

    Coming back to the current conundrum, he said it was important that the three places with surviving rhinos work together.

    A Czech expert visited the California facility a month ago, while a German expert was recently in Kenya to retrieve semen samples.

    “We’re actually in partnership with everyone that still has animals,” said the U.S. expert. “So everyone is trying methods on their own, but working together with samples.”

    Specifically, they have frozen samples of semen. The idea would be either to try to fertilize eggs in the laboratory — the test tube rhino scenario — or alternatively to impregnate a southern white rhino, of which there are far more. You would then take female calves from that combination and combine them with sperm from another northern white. But the best you could hope for would be a pure northern white, Rieches said.

    In any case, he is not expecting a breakthrough overnight. The gestation period for a northern white rhino is 17 months. (SD-Agencies)