Nikki at Cicinnati zoo. (AP)

Cincinnati, July 23 (AP): The world’s first Indian rhino baby to be conceived by artificial insemination is due in December at Cincinnati Zoo.

“I think it’s a remarkable achievement, an incredibly important success,” said Evan Blumer, a board member of the International Rhino Foundation, yesterday. “The next step is where it becomes really important. The first is to be successful, the second is to be reliable and repeatable.”

Nikki, the mother, is 15 and has a life expectancy well into her 40s, so if all goes well, she could produce several more offspring.

Semen was collected from Himal, a male Indian rhino, in November 2004 and was frozen. In August 2006, in their fourth attempt, the Cincinnati Zoo team succeeded in inseminating Nikki.

In the 20th century, the Indian rhino — native to northern India and southern Nepal — was nearly wiped out. About 200 remained before tough preservation laws began to be stringently enforced, experts say. Although their numbers have rebounded to about 2,500 in the wild, rhino poaching remains a serious problem.