A Bradford businessman is travelling to Africa to help save the world’s rarest breed of rhino from extinction.

Dave Thornes, owner of Ladyroyd Garage, in Thornton Road, and business associate John Green, of Rydam Universal, in Leeds, are to help release four of the last eight known northern white rhinos back into the wild.

The pair last year spent £50,000 creating a specially-adapted truck to transport rhinos around the Ol Pegeta Conservancy in Laikipia, Kenya.

The northern white rhinos, named Sudan, Suni, Fatu and Najin, were moved to the reserve from a zoo in the Czech Republic last December.

The two male rhinos have been kept in a separate enclosure from the two females while the animals adapt to their new environment. Mr Thornes, his wife, Fiona, and their 13-year-old daughter, Ella, will travel to Ol Pegeta next week along with Mr Green and his wife, Jackie, to help move the animals into a larger part of the reserve.

They will be filmed for the BBC’s Last Chance to See, a series on endangered species hosted by Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine.

Mr Thornes, who travelled to the reserve last year, said: “We will be involved with the movement and relocation of these animals who have been kept in captivity for years. It’s hoped that once back in the wild the animals will breed.

“We will be playing a part in repopulating Africa with an animal that has been wiped out. It will be good to see the fruits of our labours and do something to help the reserve.”

The truck, which was converted at Rydam Universal and shipped to Kenya from Southampton in December, will also be used to transport other rhinos at the reserve in order to maximise their breeding potential.

Northern white rhinos, the second largest land animal on the planet and the most threatened mammal in the world, used to be found in Uganda, Chad, Sudan and Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1960 there were more than 2,000 in the wild but poaching for horn, hide and meat saw numbers fall dramatically.

The only known wild northern white rhinos were at the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As a result of civil war and armed conflict the population fell to only four in 2005 and there has been no sightings of them since 2007.

The other four white rhinos are in Sandiago Zoo.