Press Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 8, 2006

Cumberland, Ohio – Dan Beetem has some things to learn. As the new Director of Animal Management at the Wilds, he faces more than the usual challenges that come with a new job. Not only is he in a new community, getting acquainted with new co-workers and learning the ins and outs of a new organization. He also has to get to know over 300 wild animals who call this 10,000-acre conservation center home.

So Beetem wasn’t too concerned when a young animal roaming the hillside surprised him. Coming to work early one morning during his first full week on the job in late October, he stopped to observe the herd of southern white rhinos enjoying their last few days in the open pastures before moving to winter quarters.

“I sat in my car on the roadside, trying to identify each of rhinos, when suddenly the little boulder next to one of the rhinos stood up and walked!” Beetem recalls. A rhino calf, clearly not very old, was trying to keep up with its mother and the rest of the herd.

“I thought to myself, ‘surely someone would have told me we had a rhino calf recently’,” says Beetem. “I figured I’d just missed or forgotten that bit of information with everything else I was trying to learn.”

So, he continued on his way, stopping to talk with one of the animal management specialists and casually asking how old the rhino calf was. After a confused conversation about a couple of rhino calves born nearly two years ago, they realized that the calf Beetem saw must have been born just the night before.

Beetem and rest of the Animal Management team soon confirmed the new birth. No one had seen the calf the day before, nor observed any signs of labor in the mother. The birth wasn’t a complete surprise, though. Based on the timing of the introduction of one of the male rhinos with the female herd in 2005 and the 16-17 month rhino gestation period, Wilds staff knew that a rhino birth might occur this fall. However, no breeding activity had actually been observed at the appropriate time. The females had not been tested for pregnancy. Because they are managed in such a large-scale setting, it can be quite a challenge for the staff at the Wilds to determine whether one of their southern white rhinos is pregnant. With no evidence to suggest that a particular female might be pregnant, the stress of bringing the herd in for testing outweighed the advantages of testing all of the females.

With cold weather approaching, the Wilds’ Animal Management staff decided to move up their time table for moving the rhino herd into winter quarters. Mother and calf are now safe in the Rhino Management Center, a complex of buildings and enclosures specially designed for housing rhinos.

This female calf is a positive step in the captive breeding of southern white rhinos. An area of concern for conservation scientists lies in the severely reduced reproductive rate of first generation captive born rhinos. An additional concern for rhinos in captivity is the sex ratio of the newest generation, which is heavily skewed toward males.

The new calf brings the current number of southern white rhinos at the Wilds to ten. Her mother is also mother to the first rhino born at the Wilds, another female born in 2004. There are only about 12,000 southern white rhinos left in the world.

Beetem, the newest member of the Wilds’ staff, is a graduate of Michigan State University and went on to study reproductive physiology at Louisiana State University. His extensive background in conservation includes more than 20 years of zoological management experience. He has worked at a variety of institutions across the country and was part of the animal management team that helped open Disney’s Animal Kingdom. He came to the Wilds after managing the wildlife programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s research and breeding facility on St. Catherine’s Island, off the coast of Georgia.

The Wilds is one of the largest and most innovative wildlife conservation centers in the world, with a mission to advance conservation through science, education, and personal experience. Located on nearly 10,000 acres in southeast Ohio, the Wilds is home to more than 25 species of non-native wildlife from Africa, Asia and North America and hundreds of indigenous species. In addition to innovative, in-depth science and education programs, the Wilds offers guided experiences to the public on selected days May through October.

Further information is available by visiting the Wilds’ Web site: www.thewilds.org or by calling 740-638-5030.