Use of Dna Technology in White Rhino (cerathotherium Simum) Identification and Its Applications in Conservation

South Africa plays a critical international role in white rhino, Cerathotherium simum conservation. The Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) is the statutory organization entrusted with conservation in the Province. The MPB hosts key populations of white rhino on some of its protected areas. None of these populations is currently or potentially large enough to be viable on its own. Challenges for an expansion in numbers are the limited habitat available and intra-specific competition. A meta-population strategy is required to overcome these challenges and to prevent inbreeding. The effective management of small sub-populations within a meta-population strategy requires the identification and permanent recognition of individual rhino. This has been achieved in the recent past through micro-chipping, ear-notching and the compilation of an individual file for each animal. Despite the intensive documentation and monitoring of these sub-populations, the extent to which individual bulls are responsible for successive generations of calves cannot be established with certainty. Genetic data are required. A DNA profiling technique based on molecular genetics was developed by the Animal Improvement Institute of the Agricultural Research Council using material collected from the MPB rhino. Individual animals can now be unequivocally identified by means of unique bands of micro-satellites. Each individual profile consists of a combination of the two parent’s profiles, making it therefore possible to construct parental lineages. A genetic database of the MPB rhino is being constructed. The information from the database is being applied to determine parentage, animal productivity, genetic variation, rate of inbreeding and genetic distances between populations. The DNA profiling technique provides a powerful tool for the MPB to preventing deleterious genetic consequences of maintaining small, isolated sub-populations. Objective decisions can now be made as to which individual rhino should be exchanged amongst the different sub-populations. 0199_inter_onc_tome2_part7 19/10/05 20:25 Page 787