Zoo Gets a Rare Rhino in Effort to Save Species

A 2,000-pound female southern black rhinoceros arrived at the San Diego Zoo on Tuesday from Zimbabwe as part of an international breeding program to conserve the endangered species.

The 3 1/2-year-old Chirundu was brought to the San Diego Zoo through the efforts of the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, Game Conservation International and the government of Zimbabwe.

She is one of the 10 rhinos that made the trip from Zimbabwe after being captured in the Zambezi Valley.

The rhinos landed at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport on Sunday and were delivered by Flying Tigers to their different destinations in San Diego, Milwaukee and several zoos in Texas, after being washed.

After a mandatory 30-day quarantine, Chirundu will join her mate Gundwane in the rhinoceros display at the zoo, said Georgeanne Irvine, a spokesman for the San Diego Zoo. The rhinos are not expected to mate for some time because the 3-year-old male has not reached maturity.

The program was started to create a southern black rhino gene pool in the United States to prevent the extinction of the species, which is native to eastern and southern Africa, Irvine said. The species became endangered because of an alarming decline in its numbers, from 60,000 in 1970 to 3,500 this year.

The decline is a result of poaching, and, even though the government of Zimbabwe executes poachers, many come from neighboring Zambia to hunt in the Zambezi Valley, she said. The poachers “hack up” the front of the rhinos’ heads to obtain the horn, which is highly valued in Yemen and other parts of Asia, where some believe the horns to be aphrodisiacs and men make dagger handles out of them, she said.

Some governments, like Namibia’s, have opted to cut off the horn in an effort to stop poaching, but the Zimbabwe government decided it would be hard for the rhinos to find food in the brush without their horns.

The breeding program sought by the government is part of a larger species survival plan involving other black rhinos. In February, a black rhino calf was born in the San Diego Wild Animal Park in a similar program, and the San Diego Zoo staff hopes to have the same success.