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It's a girl: first IVF bison calf joins Northern Colorado herd
And then there were... 44. Eight bison — four calves and their mothers — were released in mid-March on public lands in northern Colorado, bringing the total number of animals in the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd to 44.
A 10-month-old calf known as IVF 1 was among the newcomers. She is the first bison calf conceived using in vitro fertilization, or IVF, at Colorado State University. IVF 1 is also the first bison calf in the world to be conceived using reproductive material from animals removed from Yellowstone National Park.
This type of technology could provide a solution for conservationists seeking to protect animals facing extinction, like the Northern white rhinoceros in Africa.
[...] [Jennifer Barfield, a reproductive physiologist with the CSU Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology Laboratory,] said the team will transfer more IVF embryos later this year. She and the project partners hope to one day have 100 bison in the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd. [...] The use of this reproductive technology in American bison also opens up another avenue for conservation efforts. Barfield's lab at CSU has approximately 1,500 frozen embryos that could be used in a year, or even in a hundred years. "That gives us the opportunity to access these Yellowstone genetics for a very long time," she said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:52PM
But not if their freezer malfunctions...
And to reference to today's article about ...freezer malfunctions [soylentnews.org]... other people have pointed out that it is good business practice to spread your risk. (Or more accurately, particularly bad business practice to not spread your risk. There is even a proverb on the topic "don't put all your eggs in one basket". Anyway, I digress.) I wonder if the people in charge of the Bison facility have considered a material co-location arrangement with human facilities? Swap some bison material for some human material. That way, if one of the freezers die, you have an off-site backup.
The only difference is that the human material have nastier lawyers - which is ironic because whilst these particular bison are highly endangered, it is not like there is a shortage of humans.