HL: You're listening to a podcast from the Medical Research Council with Hazel Lambert. BM: I grew up in Rhodesia as it was called then and spent much of my time in the Zambezi valley where I became extremely enthused and attached with the wonderful diversity of wildlife, particularly mammals in that part of the world. At this current time there's a huge threat on many of these African mammals, so some of them for example the northern white rhino, there are only four left in the wild and there are about half a dozen or so in zoos and the only way of rescuing those wonderful creatures would be to make use of sophisticated reproductive technologies. HL: That was Professor Bob Miller, Director of the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit on his inspiration for setting up IBREAM, the Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals. The institute is a collaboration between human reproductive scientists and conservationists and IBREAM aim to learn more about how endangered specie's reproductive cycles work and then apply assisted reproductive techniques originally developed to help infertile people to rescue populations threatened with extinction. I asked Professor Miller what the IBREAM projects involve.
BM: The one side of it is just understanding what their reproductive status is in the wild and so if you understand whether a female is pregnant, whether she's cycling, what the structure is and what is needed, it helps in the management of those animals. Then at a more sophisticated level if we were to do work for example on something like the threatened rhino species, in order to do artificial technologies like artificial insemination, we need to understand what the reproductive cycle of the female is so that we know when to do inseminations and things like that.
HL: If there's only four white rhinos left in the world, that must be incredibly difficult so are you looking at rhinos in zoos as well? BM: We have an initiative which we're putting in place right now and that is to actually increase the genetic material in zoo collections. Thomas Hildebrand from Berlin Zoo and he's very expert at this, is going to take a team out to South Africa to actually collect semen from wild rhino there and take them back to the zoo and inseminate females in the zoo to increase their gene pool. HL: As well as the white rhino, IBREAM projects involve other species like the Ethiopian wolf and African wild dog, could you tell me about one that they have in Edinburgh Zoo, the pigmy hippo, what its reproductive problem?
BM: Ok, the pigmy hippopotamus occurs mainly in West Africa and is a very threatened and rare species, very hard to ever see, but there's some quite good populations in the zoos. One of the problems is the breeding profiles in the zoos because the sex ratio is very skewed; it's many more females than males and so in terms of zoo management what we're doing there is understanding the cycles of them first of all and then we're going to select for male and female semen so that we can inseminate to have the right kinds and proportions that are more manageable in the zoo setting. HL: And is that something that's just come about because the animals are in zoos or is that something that happens in their natural population as well? BM: We don't know the answer to that because the populations in the wild are so difficult to come across; they're in this very dense forest and they're very shy creatures, very small and they're actually solitary as well, so they only come together for breeding. HL: In terms of what IBREAM will be supporting, are you going to be running projects through PhD students?
BM: One of the things that's important is really African ownership of these animals and buying into the whole initiative. It's not a great idea to come from outside and say right we're going to sort out your problems. This has definitely got to be done as a partnership and one of the things where we see we've got a good opportunity is to actually get on board African students and train them and also bring them to have experience in the UK and in the IBREAM setting I think it's very important to be doing training at all levels – at the levels of PhD students, Masters, but also technical levels, training technicians in handling reproductive tissues and semen and so on and so forth. So there's a massive educational component to this. HL: I understand IBREAM began as a virtual organisation, are you looking to have an actual physical institute in the future?
BM: Yes, actually it's quite exciting because now the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland in Edinburgh are building new premises and they've offered IBREAM laboratories which will be open to the public and then the other exciting part is that there's a wonderful wilderness area called Lapala in western South Africa and the family who own this large tract of pristine country which has all sorts of wildlife, black and white rhino and giraffe and all sorts of things, they are now making available a camp with accommodation facilities and a conference facility and a laboratory for IBREAM for their field studies, so that's a very exciting development. HL: To find out more about how IBREAM scientists are making progress in African mammal conservation, visit the website at ibream.org and to read more about Medical Research scientist's projects visit mrc.ac.uk. HL: Hazel Lambert BM: Professor Bob Millar
