After 22 hours in the air, a half dozen rhinos took their first steps on California soil late Thursday evening.
The group of young female southern white rhinoceros arrived at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park from Johannesburg. They weren’t brought to San Diego in hopes of attracting zoo patrons; wildlife conservationists hope they can become surrogate mothers for the critically endangered northern white rhino.
“The animals did extremely well during the flight, eating normally and sleeping a good portion of the long trip,” said Steve Metzler, interim associate curator of mammals at the zoo, who accompanied the animals from Johannesburg to San Diego. “Our priority now is to ensure the rhinos are comfortable and acclimating to their new surroundings.”
They will live in the park’s specially designed Rhino Rescue Center, where they will not be on public display, The Associated Press reports.
There are only four northern white rhinos left in the world.
While some 20,000 southern white rhinos live in southern Arfica, there are only four of their genetically distinct brethren, the northern white rhino, left in the world. The San Diego park houses one, a 41-year-old female named Nola. The other three northern white rhinos live in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Nola and two of the other rhinos are too old to reproduce.
To preserve the species, zoo officials will have to resort to artificial breeding. Researchers at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research have frozen genetic material from northern white rhinos and are working on techniques to develop embryos to be implanted in the newly arrived females.
The researchers are hopeful that a northern white rhino could be born within the next 10 to 15 years. They’ve had success with similar techniques to preserve Sumatran and Javan rhinos.
In the 1960s, about 2,000 northern white rhinos lived across Africa, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
That number had dropped to 15 by 1984. The subspecies are popular targets for poachers, who sell the keratin horns for a high price in Asian countries where they are used in traditional medicines with no scientifically demonstrated effects. Keratin is the same material as human fingernails.
The southern white rhino was previously thought to be extinct but has been revived after a century of protection and conservation efforts. A recent surge of poaching in South Africa has undermined these efforts, with roughly three rhinos killed at the hands of poachers daily.
