White Rhino Calf is a First for the Cotswold Wildlife Park

The first day of the month of July brought a different kind of first for the Cotswold Wildlife Park in the UK. The Park welcomed its very first White Rhino calf in the early hours of the morning. The calf was born to first time parents Nancy and Monty. The family has remained in good health for the first few weeks of the calf's life.

Parents Monty and Nancy are seven years old. Nancy joined the Park in 2009 from the Mafunyane Game Farm in South Africa. It was hoped that one day, Nancy and Month would successfully breed and produce the Park's first ever White Rhino calf.

White Rhinos were once the rarest of the five subspecies of Rhinos and were on the verge of extinction in the 1900s. Thanks to conservation efforts, the White Rhino is now the most common of the five subspecies. However, poaching has escalated to serious levels in the past three years due to a demand for rhino horn in market of traditional medicine in Asia.