CryoVault

One of the worst-case scenarios for us would be to fail at protecting rhinos from poaching in South Africa and Zimbabwe. For this reason, we would like to have one last ace up our sleeve: a biobank.

This is why we created the Hemmersbach Rhino Force CryoVault. This biobank hold deeply frozen sperm, egg cells and other genetic material of African rhinos. The purpose of our project is to enable future assisted reproduction of rhinos by applying genetics collected and cryopreserved now! Using this approach enables us to conserve the genetic diversity of these pachyderms for future generations.

Not only DNA, cells or tissues are stored indefinitely by cryo-conservation, but also rhino sperm and oocytes (egg cells). Consequently, this frozen archive contributes to the research of population genetics, but more importantly, can be directly applied in current rhino breeding through assisted reproduction technologies. We feel that this is an inevitable step for the future rhino conservation and an ultimate safety net against genetic diversity loss.

We therefore asked the renowned veterinarian and expert in wildlife assisted reproduction, Dr. Imke Lüders from Hamburg to lead our project Cryovault.

„A minimum basis of genetic variety is important to breed and grow a viable population of rhinos.“ Dr. Imke Lüders, GEOlifes

Our objective is to build the largest cryovault for African rhino genetics in the world by sampling post-morten and intra-vitam. Moreover, we want to establish a reference database for this species. Any material collected will be banked alongside with animal biometrical, environment and location data, which provides crucial information for the studying of population dynamics.