At a quiet, off-view area at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, wildlife care staff are celebrating a momentous milestone—the hatching of an endangered lappet-faced vulture chick.

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park wildlife care specialists know how popular the Safari Park’s annual spring Butterfly Jungle event is to the thousands of guests who visit each year. While the Safari Park is temporarily closed to on-grounds visitors due to COVID-19 restrictions, dedicated teams of wildlife care specialists and horticulturists are still busy working hard to care for the thousands of butterflies, plants and other wildlife that live inside the Hidden Jungle aviary.

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.

Future, a 10-week-old southern white rhino calf at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, made a new friend when she met 6-month-old southern white rhino calf Edward, on Saturday (Feb. 1, 2020.)