Rhinoceros at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo gives birth to calf

MAY 21, 2019

Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo says an eastern black rhinoceros named Kapuki has given birth to a calf.

The zoo says Kapuki was pregnant for 15 months before the calf was born Sunday night. Zoo staff members monitored her labor and are watching the rhino and her calf remotely using cameras to give them privacy but are nearby.

The zoo hasn't named the calf or announced its sex, but officials say details will be announced once available. The animals won't be visible to the public until further notice, but people can follow along on the zoo's social media accounts and at #RhinoWatch on twitter.

Zoo officials say the calf stood up at just 53 minutes of age.

Source

DNA evidence used to protect the rhinoceros from extinction

Genetic evidence helping match confiscated rhinoceros horns to crime scenes -- Already used in scores of successful prosecutions

Date:  January 8, 2018

Source:  Nova Southeastern University

Summary:

A new study shows that genetic database now being used in the fight against poaching the rhinoceros.

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Scientific evaluation of rhino diets improves zoo

Study highlights success of changing diet for reproduction in endangered species

Date:  October 26, 2017

Source:  San Diego Zoo Global

A recently published study in the journal Pachyderm highlights the ongoing effort of accredited zoos to address challenges and improve the sustainability of endangered species populations in their care. The study, co-authored by scientists from San Diego Zoo Global and Mars Hill University, evaluated fertility issues in captive-born southern white rhinos and determined that diets including soy and alfalfa were likely contributors to breeding challenges.

"The captive southern white rhinoceros (SWR) population is not currently self-sustaining, due to the reproductive failure of captive-born females," said Christopher Tubbs Ph.D, San Diego Zoo Global and lead author of the paper. "Our research into this phenomenon points to chemicals produced by plants present in captive diets, such as soy and alfalfa, as likely causes."

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'Better de-horned than dead' – zoo chops rhino horns to foil poachers

Czech zoo takes saw to the horns of its 21 rhinoceroses in response to deadly attack at Paris wildlife park this month

Associated Press in Prague

Wednesday 22 March 2017 01.25 GMT

A Czech zoo has started to remove the horns from its 21 rhinos as a precaution after the recent killing of a rhinoceros at a wildlife park in France by assailants who stole the animal’s horn.

With rhino horns considered a wonder cure in Asia – for everything from cancer, colds and fevers to high blood pressure, hangovers, impotence and other ailments – poachers have killed thousands of the animals in Africa and elsewhere.

It is estimated that 6,000 individuals from the world’s five species of rhinos have been killed in the last nine years, leaving a global wild population of about 30,000.

But the attack at the Thoiry zoo near Paris earlier this month was a warning sign for zookeepers around the globe that poaching could be spreading beyond the killing fields of Africa and Asia.
 

The Dvur Kralove zoo, 70 miles north-east of Prague, has four southern white rhinos and 17 black ones, the largest group of its kind in Europe.

Director Přemysl Rabas said on Tuesday that it was a tough decision to saw off the animals’ horns.

But, he added: “The risk that the rhinos currently face, not only in the wild but even in zoos, is too high.

“The safety of the animals is our first concern. A de-horned rhino is definitely a better option than a dead rhino.” The zoo said the procedure is painless for the animals and has been used before for safety reasons, especially when the rhinos are moved to other locations. The severed horns will gradually grow back again.

 

Read on 

Poachers break into Paris zoo, shoot rhino dead and steal its horn

Four-year-old rhinoceros named Vince found with three bullets to head at Thoiry Zoo 

Katie Forster

A rhinoceros at a zoo near Paris was shot three times in the head on Monday night by poachers who then cut off its horn with a chainsaw.

The four-year-old rhinoceros, named Vince, was found dead by keepers at Thoiry Zoo, to the west of the French capital.

One or more poachers are believed to have broken in to the zoo and forced their way into an enclosure where three rhinos lived, reported Le Parisien. 


The white rhinoceros's second horn had also been partially hacked off, indicating the perpetrators had run out of time or their equipment had failed.

They may have also planned to steal the horns of the two other white rhinos, five-year-old Bruno and 37-year-old Gracie. Both animals are said to be safe and healthy.

Vince was born on in September 2012 at Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands. He arrived in Paris in March 2015 with Bruno.

Rhinoceros horns can be sold on the black market for around £30,000 each and are particularly sought after in China, where they are believed to have aphrodisiac qualities.



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4 years old.  You callous, cowardly bastards.  Shame on you and those who pay you your blood money.  Just remember that karma has no menu; you get served what you deserve.

Thousands of rhinos, 500 poachers; grim toll in the hunt for prized horns

Hundreds of illegal hunters of the rhinoceros in South Africa’s Kruger national park have been shot dead by rangers in the past five years, but the temptation of a rich reward to end an impoverished life in Mozambique keeps them coming

David Smith in Hoedspruit, South Africa

Sunday 18 October 2015 00.10 BSTLast modified on Sunday 18 October 201500.11 BST

The well-heeled tourists filing through the modest airport at Hoedspruit – Afrikaans for Hat Creek – look carefree and expectant. Guides are standing by to transport them to luxurious bush lodges offering spa treatments, campfire dinners and dawn and dusk game drives offering a potential glimpse of Africa’s “big five”.

But something is different from the safaris enjoyed by the privileged generations of the past. At the 36,000-acre Moditlo private game reserve near Kruger national park, for example, the rhinos do not have horns – they have been removed for their own safety. And during night safaris on dirt tracks under the majesty of a star-studded sky visitors are warned not to use torches, lest they be confused with poachers. When guests – usually affluent and white – gaze from air-conditioned bedrooms into the perfect darkness of the bush, few are likely to consider the murderous chase taking place there between poacher, ranger and rhino. For the poachers – usually poor and black – the risks are immense, but so are the rewards.

“When you look at the impoverished communities around us and the unemployment rate in South Africa, you’d have to be naive to think it’s not going to explode,” said Tim Parker, a warden managing Moditlo and Thornybush Nature Reserve, where anti-poaching costs have gone up 500% in the past three years. “Soon there are going to be gun battles. I can see it coming.”

South Africa has more than four-fifths of the world’s rhino population. Poaching is at an unprecedented level, driven by demand in countries such as Vietnam, where horns, used in traditional medicine or as a middle-class delicacy, fetch up to $65,000 (£42,000) a kilo, more expensive than gold. A record 1,215 rhinos were killed last year, almost treble the 448 lost in 2011. As of late August this year, 749 rhinos were known to have been poached – 544 of them in Kruger park, where officials estimate 6,000 well-armed poachers are at large.

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African wildcat caught on camera riding on the back of rhino in rare footage

The 'world-first' video was captured by animal conservationists

ALICE HARROLD

Tuesday 28 July 2015

A genet cat has been filmed riding the back of a rhino on a nature reserve in South Africa.

The genet, a cat-like animal with a long tail and spotted coat, was seen sitting on top of buffalo and rhinos in photographs last year but the act has now been caught on video for the first time.

In the surprising footage, the cat sits on the rhino's back and swats at creatures as they fly past.

The conservationists called the footage a discovery of a new and rare "mammal symbiotic relationship" and have speculated that the cat may have been using the larger animals as a vantage point for hunting its prey.

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Nepal rhino population increases by more than 100

Nepal’s rhino population in the Terai Arc Landscape has increased 21 per cent over the last fours according to figures released by the Nepali Government

There are now 645 rhinos there, compared to the 2011 estimate of 534, and numbers are the highest they’ve been since the early 1950s.

The increase in rhino numbers also comes just days after Nepal marked yet another 365-day period without a single rhino being poached – the third time in five years they’ve achieved this zero-poaching feat.

The rhino count was conducted from 11 April–2 May inChitwan National Park, Parsa Wildlife Reserve, Bardia National Park, Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve and their buffer zones in the Terai Arc Landscape. 

It was led by the government’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and Department of Forests, in collaboration with WWF Nepal and National Trust for Nature Conservation.

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Baby rhino in intensive care after birth at Werribee Open Range zoo

Calf raised the concern of vets at the Victorian zoo after she picked up an infection from her mother

Oliver Milman

theguardian.com, Monday 29 December 2014 07.16 GMT

A baby rhino is in round-the-clock intensive care following its birth at Werribee Open Range zoo on Saturday.

The calf was born at 4.20am on Saturday, weighing in at 67kg, but raised concern among vets at the Victorian zoo after picking up an infection from her mother, Si Si.

It’s hoped a dose of antibiotics will ensure the infant rhino survives. The animal, called Salt until an African name is chosen, will receive constant care for the next four weeks in the zoo’s veterinary hospital.

The baby will then be hand-raised by vets and keepers during her first four months as Si Si is unable to feed her calves. Salt has a sister – 18-month-old Kipenzi.

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Man seriously injured in Whipsnade Zoo 'rhino incident'

19 November 2014 Last updated at 13:22

The man was immersed in water during the incident, the air ambulance said

A zookeeper has been taken to hospital after being found with serious injuries in an enclosure following an "incident involving a rhino".

The man, in his 50s, was taken to hospital from Whipsnade Zoo, in Bedfordshire, at about 09:30 GMT.

The keeper was found by colleagues in water at the zoo at about 08:15, a zoo spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Magpas Helimedix Air Ambulance said the man had suffered "serious injuries".

Paramedics took measures to keep him warm as his body temperature had dropped considerably after being immersed in the water.

He was taken to Addenbrooks Hospital, where he remains in a serious but stable condition.

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Could sound design help captive rhino breeding?

1 November 2014 Last updated at 13:49

By Jonathan Webb

Science reporter, BBC News

Researchers in Texas are investigating whether the hum and rumble of urban life is one of the factors that hinders the captive breeding of rhinoceroses.

Other research has considered the influence of diet and physical surroundings, but scientists speaking at a conference said they believed the animals' soundscape might be crucial.

Rhinos have extremely good ears, picking up "infrasound" far deeper than the range of human hearing.

Three species are listed as endangered.

"We can go into some zoos and think, this is delightfully quiet - but it might be that some animals don't think it's quiet at all, because urban areas have a lot of chronic infrasound," said lead researcher Suzi Wiseman.

Ms Wiseman, who has just completed a doctorate in environmental geography at Texas State University, presented her preliminary results at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Indianapolis.

'Healthy soundscape'

Rhinos, she explained, can hear down to a frequency of four hertz, whereas even a human baby, with entirely undamaged ears, can normally only pick up sounds as low as 20 hertz. Giraffes and elephants can also hear in this infrasound range.

The other end of rhino hearing might also be quite acute, because people have witnessed the animals making high-pitched whistling and giggling noises when adults and youngsters play.

"The soundscape is something that zoos need to consider and it's something that can be improved," Ms Wiseman told the BBC.

She said that although zoos and other institutions had made a lot of effort to make their animals as comfortable as possible, "nobody's really looked at the noise factor".

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Hundreds of rhinos to be evacuated from Kruger National Park

Nearly 500 rhinos could be moved from South Africa's Kruger National Park to save them from poachers if plans are approved, say the country’s Department of Environmental Affairs.

More than 80 per cent of the world’s population of African rhino – some 21 000 - live in South Africa (93 per cent of Africa’s white rhino and 39 per cent of Africa’s black rhino), including 9,600 white rhinos in Kruger.

Known as a stronghold Kruger is therefore heavily targeted by poachers with a record 606 (out of a total of 1004) rhinos killed during 2013. The news is not good for 2014 either with 351 rhinos being poached since January. 

The animals will be moved to other less-known and lesser-targeted parks, both national and private, in a hope this will spread the risk and help create other rhino strongholds across the country.

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Mining poses new threat to world's greatest rhino sanctuary

Jeff Barbee and David Smith in Fuleni, South Africa

Thursday 17 July 2014 05.30 BST

The surface of a pool near the Imfolozi river ripples as a white rhino, its young calf close by, lowers its mouth to drink. Rhinos have roamed the Earth in such a way for 40 million years. Humans, by comparison, are new kids on the block.

Yet it is modern man that threatens to drive these stately creatures to extinction.Figures released last week show that 558 rhinos have been slaughtered in South Africa so far in 2014, putting it on course to be the deadliest year of poaching since records began.

Well-armed gangs continue to run riot, shooting the animals with impunity and hacking off their horns, said to be more than worth their weight in gold on the black market. Now conservationists warn of a new threat – voracious mining – that could drive the endangered animals to the brink.The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi park in KwaZulu-Natal province, a natural oasis abundant in elephants, leopards, lions and more than 300 bird species, is arguably the world’s greatest rhino sanctuary and ground zero in the battle to save them. Once the exclusive hunting ground of Zulu king Shaka, it is the oldest protected wilderness in Africa, proclaimed in 1895, and the scene of one of the most inspiring conservation success stories of the 20th century.

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More than five hundred rhino killed by poachers in South Africa in 2014

Official figures suggest this year will be deadliest yet for rhino, breaking 2013 record of 1,004 deaths

theguardian.com, Friday 11 July 2014 11.05 BST

Some 558 rhino have been killed in South Africa already this year, setting the country on course for a gruesome new record number of poaching deaths, wildlife officials said on Thursday.

Despite stepped-up efforts to curb the scourge, the number of animals killed is around 100 higher than at the same point in 2013, a year which saw a record 1,004 deaths.

The vast, tourist-filled Kruger National Park has been hardest hit.

"Since January 2014, 351 rhinos have been poached in the park," the department of environmental affairs said.

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Australia bans importation of rhino body parts

Australian trophy hunters are to be banned from bring their prized rhino horns and body parts gained from overseas hunting trips back home ABC News have reported.

Many people travel to Africa with the purpose of hunting big game, such as rhinoceroses and lions, in a controlled and confined area from where they cannot escape.

This is often referred to as canned hunting and involves animals that have been habituated to human contact and are usually unafraid, making them easy targets for a bullet or an arrow.

But now thanks to the ban Australia's Federal Government has issued, Australian hunters will be unable to bring their so-called trophies, or rather rhino body parts, back into the country on their return.

"It's just not right at this time in history that we are allowing endangered species to be brought back as trophies into Australia," Environment Minister Greg Hunt told ABC.

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It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!…. It’s a Rhino

A South African photographer captured unbelievable photos of a rhino suspended more than 2,000 feet in the air in an operation called a “rhino lift” in which a helicopter relocated rhinos on South African animal reserves.

Freelance outdoor and wildlife photographer Em Gatland, 31, of Hilton, South Africa, tagged along with a crew relocating the endangered animals on a reserve in Northern Zululand. The lifts, which take place annually, take rhinos from public government owned animal reserves and fly them to large holding areas. The rhinos are under watch for five weeks to make sure they show no signs of stress and veterinarians are sure they are in good health. They are then auctioned to off to private reserves for breeding and safety, Gatland told ABC News.

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Nepal's year of zero poaching comes to an end

Nepal’s run of zero poaching has come sadly to an end with the news a rhino was killed for its horn in the buffer zone surrounding Chitwan National Park. Nearly three months ago, in March 2014, we reported the fantastic news that no rhinos, elephants or tigers had been poached in Nepal for a whole year, the second zero poaching year in Nepal’s recent history. 

Becci May, Regional Manager (Asian species) at WWF-UK, said: “This sad case of a rhino being killed in Nepal highlights that poaching is still a serious threat and we need to continue working against the illegal wildlife trade. WWF in Nepal continues to work with the government, enforcement agencies, conservation partners and the local communities to tackle this horrific crime and we hope the next year can return to another year of zero poaching for Nepal.”

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/Nepal-rhino-poached.html

Poaching spreads to Namibia

Elephant and rhino poaching in Africa is spreading to the sparsely-populated vastness of Namibia in the southeast of the continent, latest official figures show.

Between 2005 and 2011 just two elephant were killed in Namibia, while 121 have been killed in the past two and a half years, and while no rhino were poached between 2005 and 2010, a total of 11 have been killed since then -- rising from one in 2011 to four already this year.

Deputy Environment Minister Pohamba Shifeta told AFP that the government is worried by the trend and is working with law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem. "We don't want the numbers to escalate further," Shifeta said. "There is a high probability that attention will shift to Namibia as we have recently experienced."

Across the border in South Africa, rhino poaching has reached crisis levels, with more than 290 killed already this year. Most of the poaching in Namibia has taken place in protected areas, such as the Bwabwata National Park in the northeast, where 13 elephant were killed in 2012, the environment ministry report said.

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Chessington World of Adventures ‘sells miracle rhino manure on eBay’

Tuesday 15 Apr 2014 10:06 pm

If you’ve ever wanted to own rhino manure now is your chance.

A 1kg amount of the ‘high quality’ dung from Chessington World of Adventures is reportedly available from eBay for £9.99.

The ‘miracle’ manure will apparently help you achieve a luscious lawn and was put up for sale after the theme park was asked the secret to their immaculate grass.

The eBay description says: ‘With Rhino-Grow you too can prosper from the dung’s success and have a luscious lawn this summer.’

The dung was reportedly retrieved from three rhinos at Chessington – Dozer, Gyasi and Kanty.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/04/15/chessington-world-of-adventures-sells-miracle-rhino-manure-on-ebay-4700342/

South Africa losing 18 rhinos a week – 277 so far in 2014

Posted by: Kevin Heath / 20 hours ago

South Africa has released the latest figures for rhino poaching. With 15 weeks gone of 2014 the total number of rhino poached in the country has reach 277. The average weekly figure is slightly down on the average of 20 rhino killed a week in 2013.

The Kruger National Park continues to take the brunt of the killings with little change in the rate of poaching since last year. Kruger is currently losing and average of 11.06 rhino a week compared to an average of 11.6 rhino a week in 2014.

Eastern Cape province has seen 6 rhinos killed so far this year – already a higher figure than last year when a total of 5 rhino were killed by poachers in the region.

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