Even in the face of COVID-19 which has threatened the human face on earth, Kenya has a reason to smile following the birth of a Male Southern White Rhino Calf at the Meru National Park.
Kenya’s Tourism CS Najib Balala shared the good news with Kenyans who are currently on partial lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The little male southern white rhino calf. [Photo courtesy]
“We have a new-born Male Southern White Rhino Calf at Meru National Park. He was born 3days ago,” Balala ecstatically tweeted.
The Southern White Rhinos were once categorized as “near threatened species” of the rhinos by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the 19th century due to poaching.
They were high-sought after die to their rhino horns which some Middle East and Asian countries believed had medicinal value but through conservation efforts, the numbers are stunning.
There are about 20,000 of them in East and Southern Africa the majority of them being in South Africa. In Kenya though, about 30 southern white rhinos call the Ol Pejeta Conservancy home. They were critical for the survival of the world’s last northern male white rhino Sudan which died in March 2018 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy where it had lived from 2009 after being translocated from Dvůr Králové Zoo in Czech.
The southern white rhino is categorized as one of the planet’s largest and heaviest mammal. Females weigh 1,700 kgs and males weigh up to 2,300 kgs. They have two horns on their snout with a hump that supports their large heads with a flat but broad mouth for feeding. It lives in the grassland and savannahs of Kenya and South Africa.
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