Taman Safari Indonesia (TSI) wildlife park in Bogor, West Java, celebrated the birth of white southern rhinoceros over the Easter weekend.
aman Safari Indonesia (TSI) wildlife park in Bogor, West Java, celebrated the birth of a white southern rhinoceros over the Easter weekend.
Twenty-year-old white rhino Juma gave birth to a female calf, which the park officials named Ramadani Jumat Agung, or Raja for short.
“We chose the name because it was born during the Ramadan month and on Jumat Agung [Good Friday],” Dodik Widjanarkan, advisory board chairman of the Indonesia Rhinoceros Foundation (YBI), said on Tuesday.
Raja’s father is Merdeka, a male rhino that is also about 20 years of age.
Southern white rhinos are currently listed as "Near Threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and their population is in decline. The IUCN estimates that there are a total of 10,080 remaining in the wild, facing significant threats such as poaching and the illegal trade of rhino horns.
The southern white rhinoceros is a subspecies of the white rhinoceros. While these white rhinos also reside in zoos and private nature reserves worldwide, they are found almost exclusively in southern Africa from Angola and Namibia eastward through Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Eswatini and Mozambique, with smaller populations made up of introduced animals in Kenya and southern Zambia.
Jansen Manansang, YBI chairman and TSI founder, said he hoped the Indonesian public would continue giving attention to rhinoceros.
“We also hope for full support from the government and citizens to rhino conservation, especially for the Sumatran and Javan rhino,” he said. (dre)
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