Najin and Fatou are a mother and daughter who live in the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya. They are the only remaining examples in the world of the ‘northern white rhinoceros’ species.

Unfortunately, due to problems with their reproductive organs, neither of them can give birth. For some time now, numerous scientists, including some Italians, have been trying in vitro fertilisation to save the species, which would otherwise soon face extinction.

The two females are now alone, and as a result the northern rhinos are considered extinct from the point of view of future generations, when Najin's father, the historic Sudan, died in 2018.

(here are our two articles about him: https://malindikenya.net/en/articles/social/environment/sudan-the-last-northern-white-rhino-has-died.html

and also https://malindikenya.net/en/articles/social/environment/one-more-hope-to-save-the-white-rhino.html

Najin is now 35 years old and life expectancy for rhinos is certainly no more than ten years. Her father, who died at 45, was considered an exception. Poaching is still the main cause of the disappearance of rhinoceroses, which are now protected 24 hours a day by rangers. Not only the northern white rhinoceros, but also the southern one, a closely related subspecies that risked extinction in the last century, but thanks to the security provided by protected reserves, there are now more than 15,000.

At Ol Pejeta, for example, there have been no cases of poaching for seven years.

Fatou is 25 years old and would still have the chance to mate, but she too, like her mother, has a problem with her uterus. However, as she still has viable eggs, she can be inseminated in vitro with sperm from dead specimens that have been frozen, and she could produce at least 10 more before becoming too old.

In any case there is another way, scientists are planning to start implanting the first northern white rhino embryos in a surrogate southern white rhino female this year. There are 36 ova with which this experiment can be carried out, so that these splendid specimens, a little smaller and lighter in colour, can still be admired, and only in Kenya on Earth.