Southern white rhino Edward turned 1 year old today (July 28, 2020), and a birthday celebration was held in his honor at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center.

Researchers from San Diego Zoo Global and Embryo Plus South Africa performed an ovum pick-up (OPU) procedure on Nikita, a 9-year-old female southern white rhinoceros at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center, on March 6.

Scientists at San Diego Zoo Global’s Frozen Zoo® have achieved a major milestone in saving wildlife species: This unique collection of genetic material now contains 10,000 individual cell lines from more than 1,100 species and subspecies—some of them critically endangered.