The story of our interaction with the northern white rhino is one of the conservation movement’s saddest tales of recent times. “In the 60s there were 2,500 northern whites left in central Africa,” said Paul De Ornellas of the Zoological Society of London. “Poaching brought that down to 30 by the end of the 20th century, and now to the last two.”

Last week, the species’ last male, Sudan, had to be put down because of ill health, leaving only two aging females on the planet as representatives of a creature that once roamed in its tens of thousands across Africa.

Sudan was the last northern white rhino that was born in the wild. His death is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature, and it saddened everyone who knew him,” Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at the Dvur Králové Zoo, told Agence France-Presse.

On the next morning, the conservancy held a memorial service for Sudan. The ceremony, a tribute to his life, began with the Kenyan national anthem, a poem, and a minute of silence.

"Fare thee well Sudan," the conservancy posted on its Facebook page. "You have done your work to highlight the plight of rhino species across the world; now the onus is on us to ensure that rhino populations thrive across our planet."

But let's not count out the rhino yet... human ingenuity could yet save a species that has been brought to the brink of extinction.

There’s a plan to bring back the northern white rhinos back from extinction. This involves in vitro fertilization (IVF), stem cell science and gene editing, which also paves the way to rescue other animals at risk, such as the Sumatran and Javan rhinos.

“We have stores of frozen samples of semen taken from several northern white males that used to live in zoos in Europe,” says a scientist. “What we want to do is thaw some of these samples and use them to fertilise eggs taken from the species’ last females. We could start that process later this year.”

The issue is urgent, he stressed. Najin and Fatu, the last two female members of the species, are old and the quality of their eggs is poor.

The northern white rhinos wouldn’t be in the state they are in currently if humans didn’t poach them for their horns. Now we have the duty to save them no matter how hard it would be!

Yes, saving this beautiful species will be difficult as this is a project that will involve scientists based in Germany, Italy, Kenya and the US and its controversial. Some conservationists argue that the resources that will be used to save the species can be better spent on reducing the ecological threats to other creatures before they reach a critically endangered status. Other wildlife experts argue that such a complex approach to species preservation could lull conservationists into an unjustified sense of security.

The IVF plan involves creating embryos and implanting them in surrogate mothers from a closely related sub-species, the southern white rhino, which is not endangered.

So it all comes down to the conservationists and their decision making. Is saving other species more important or bringing back this species from extinction?

The more important question is: why can’t we save both?