Hello all! I visited the zoo the other day and overheard two visitors discussing the rhinos.... I overheard one visitor say that Chester Zoo owns the Rhino stud book. Is this true? What exactly does this include? Thank you!
Chester holds the studbook for Black Rhinos. The studbook contains details on all individuals in Europe who are part of the EEP breeding program. Such as there birth date and location, Current location, offspring, who there parents are etc. If say a male died then it would be upto the studbook keeper to assign the zoo another one or if a youngster reached matuarity and they current collection didn't have space to keep him/her then the studbook keeper would assign that individal to another collection. If another collection wanted to house black rhino then the studbook holder would be the first port of call when it came to sourcing animals.
However in EEPs the coorinator will make recommendations on animal transfers based on genetics etc and these have to be passed by the EEP committe for that species which usual comprises of around10 people from various EAZA institutions. ESBs are lower level managed programmes and do not have committes. I think black rhino are an EEP.
