ODE TO PUNTUNG
PUNTUNG is in pain and can no longer vocalise. The cancer has spread rapidly through her body and she can no longer breathe through her left nostril. She’s dying. One of the last critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceroses left in this country, Puntung’s imminent demise will sound the death knell for the continued survival of this species in this nation.
It doesn’t seem too long ago when conservationists’ hopes were pinned on this female rhinoceros. Back in 2011, the dramatic rescue of Puntung from the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Lahad Datu saw a helicopter precariously lifting a crate containing the young and rare Sumatran rhino in the midst of rain and foggy conditions.
In a joint (and a rather unlikely matchmaking) operation by Sabah Wildlife Department and Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora), the rhino, then aged around 10 to 12 years old, was moved to the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary to meet and mate with Kertam, a middle-aged male rhinoceros. This was the scientists’ biggest shot at breeding this species in captivity, boosting the muchbeleaguered animal’s chance for survival in the face of extinction.
“This is the very last chance to save this species,” acknowledged Dr Laurentius Ambu, the then Sabah Wildlife Department director during the Christmas day rescue operation. However, attempts to breed the rhinoceros in captivity proved to be unsuccessful. Kertam’s sperm quality wasn’t ideal and while Puntung and Iman, another female rhinoceros in captivity, were producing eggs, they were incapable of bearing a foetus due to reproductive abnormalities. be closely related to the extinct wooly rhinos of prehistoric times.
The rhinoceros, which derives its name from the Greek words (nose) and
(horn,) isn’t exactly an aestheticallypleasing creature to behold. It’s an ungainly herbivorous mammal with hooves (also known as ungulate) with a rather large head, broad chest, thick legs, and poor eyesight but with excellent hearing and olfactory senses.
A release by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in September 2015, had presumed the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) to be extinct in the wild in this country. This marks the last of the rhino species found in this country, since the extinction of the Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros Sondaicus) in the 1930s.
Experts have estimated that there are likely less than 100 individual Sumatran rhinoceroses scattered in small isolated groups in Sumatra and Kalimantan. According to World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the population is so thinly spread that breeding is believed to be minimal, which means this species could go extinct within 10 years, if not sooner.
Rhinoceroses are among the most threatened species in the world because of their widely sought-after horns, falsely believed to contain immense medicinal properties. Their distinctive horns — made out of keratin, a protein found in hair, fingernails and animal hooves — have long been believed in traditional medicine and folklore to be able to cure a myriad of ailments, including snakebites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning and even “devil possession”! The author of
Richard Ellis wrote: “It’s not clear that rhino horn serves any medicinal purpose whatsoever, but it is a testimony to the power of tradition that millions of people believe that it does. It is heartbreaking to realise that the world’s rhinos are being eliminated from the face of the earth in the name of medications that probably don’t work.”