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Endangered wild cattle cloned

A banteng clone at an embryo technology firm in Iowa, U.S. — AFP

SAN FRANCISCO APRIL 8. Astounding even veterans of the fight against animal extinction, cloning technology has reproduced two endangered wild cattle bulls, each born by dairy cows last week on an Iowa farm. The procedure that created the bantengs has given animal conservationists hope that cross-species breeding can help reverse daily disappearance of 100 living species and add genetic diversity to dwindling animal populations.

If they survive, the two bantengs will be transferred to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and encouraged to breed with the captive population there. The technology is still fraught with problems and a long way from paying significant dividends. The cloned bantengs, for instance, won't begin breeding until they reach maturity in about six years. Nonetheless, animal conservationists are excited about the two unnamed bantengs.

``The fact that it can happen at all just astounds me,'' said Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species. In 1977, the zoo began preserving cells and genetic material from hundreds of animals in a programme it dubbed the Frozen Zoo. Tissue samples from each animal are stored in small plastic vials, which are submerged and frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. ``At the time we did not know how this resource might be used, but we knew it was important to save as much information about endangered species as we could,'' Mr. Ryder said.

Now, that foresight is beginning to pay off with the banteng, a white-stockinged animal hunted for its slender, curved horns. Fewer than 8,000 bantengs exist in the wild, mostly on the Indonesian island of Java. — AP

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