News Excerpt: 

Scientists have achieved the world's first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.

Present Status of White Rhinoceros:

• Northern white rhinos, which despite their name are actually grey, used to roam freely in several countries in east and central Africa, but their numbers fell sharply due to widespread poaching for their horns.
• Now only two rhinos remain: two females, Najin and her daughter Fatu. Both of the former zoo animals are kept under tight security at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
• Northern white rhinoceros, (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), critically endangered subspecies of the white rhinoceros and the most endangered animal on Earth (Possibly Extinct in the Wild).

How scientists achieved Pregnancy:

• The scientists turned to in-vitro fertilization, harvesting the eggs of female northern white rhinos and using sperm from dead male rhinos of the subspecies to produce embryos that eventually will be transferred to southern white rhino surrogate mothers. 
• The project has taken years and has had to overcome many challenges: from working out how to collect eggs from the two-tonne animals, to creating the first-ever rhino embryos in a lab and trying to establish how and when to implant them.
• By way of proof of concept, the scientists said they transferred the embryo of a southern white rhino into a surrogate mother of that subspecies at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
• The international BioRescue team, backed by the German government, confirmed on Wednesday that the procedure had produced a successful pregnancy of 70 days, with a well-developed 6.4 cm (2.5 inch)-long male embryo.