Sun Shines on Debut of Rhino Calf at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

After a weekend of rain, blue skies finally made an appearance, just in time for the debut of a 2-month-old, greater one-horned rhinoceros at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

     The female calf named Charlees, Hindi for Charlie, was born on Jan. 20 to first-time mother, Alta. The pair spent the first two months in a boma where Charlees could bond with her mother before the calf could meet the remainder of the seven-member, greater one-horned rhino herd.

     The calf and mother came racing out of the boma, stopped to say hello to the other rhinos and continued trotting along the 40-acre Asian Savanna habitat where the calf saw other species for the first time including a large bovine called a gaur.

     Once widespread in Southeast Asia, the greater one-horned rhinoceros is now found only in India and Nepal. Numbering approximately 2,800, this species is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In 2011, the poaching of wild rhinos increased exponentially, reducing populations of this species as well as black, white, Javan and Sumatran rhinoceros.

     Charlees is the 61st greater one-horned rhino born at the Safari Park since 1975, making the Park the foremost breeding facility in the world for this species. The Park is also the first facility in the Western Hemisphere to have a successfully reproducing group of third- and fourth-generation rhinos of this species.