Hamilton Zoo says one of its wild-born white rhinoceros,
Moesha, has given birth to a male calf.
Zoo director Stephen Standley said the birth was good news
because staff had been concerned the rhino -- thought to be
about 15 years old - might not breed.
The calf was born after a 16-month gestation, the sixth in
the New Zealand breeding programme.
Moesha was captured in Kruger National Park in South Africa
in October 1999 and should have been fertile since the age of
six or seven.
"We had very real concerns that she may have missed her
chance to be a mum," Mr Standley said.
Six wild-caught southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium
simum simum) were added to the NZ breeding programme in 1999,
and studies done on their breeding cycles.
In 2007, stud managers changed the social structure of the
Hamilton Zoo rhinoceros group by swapping its breeding male
and two male offspring for Kruger, a wild-caught male from
Auckland Zoo. He had not previously had a chance to breed at
Auckland, where another male, Zambezi has dominated.
Moesha started breeding cycles within two months of Kruger's
arrival at Hamilton and conceived within six months.
Their calf is a coup for the breeding programme because it
introduces genetics from two original "founders", an
important gain in genetic diversity of the Australasian
population of white rhinoceros.
Rhinos were on the verge of extinction in the early 1990s but
constraints on habitat loss and poaching means numbers have
since risen from fewer than 100 to over 11,000 in the wild.
Moesha and her two-week-old calf will go on display to the
public for short periods from this week, the zoo said.
Hamilton is also home to two other females, Kito and Caballe,
and Caballe's calf Imani.
