It’s now or never
Sumatran rhino numbers have plunged so low that if captive breeding is not done now, the species might well tip over the brink.
Our few remaining Sumatran rhinos are so widely dispersed that they may never meet and mate. They need a helping hand.
SHE has difficulty moving and hobbles pitifully around her enclosure in a special sanctuary in Sabah. Her left forefoot is just a stump – it was caught in a snare when she was a calf. So they named her Puntung, Malay for “stump”.
Her handicap had prevented her from actively foraging for food, which explains her skinny frame – the lines of her rib cage show through her torso.
“With only three good legs, she can’t move far in the forest. She can’t reach for a lot of food, she can only browse. She has lacerations on her neck and hind leg and is badly scarred, indicating how tough a time she must have had in the forest,” says veterinarian Dr Zainal Zahari Zainuddin.
Thankfully, Puntung, a female Sumatran rhinoceros, is now safely esconced at Borneo Rhino Sanctuary, a 4,500ha sprawl of forest within Tabin Wildlife Reserve, some 45km from Lahad Datu in eastern Sabah.
Late last year, news of her capture made headlines all over the world. She was trapped on Dec 18 in another part of Tabin and on Christmas Day, airlifted by helicopter to the sanctuary. In her new home, she is showered with attention. She has her own paddock and workers feed her with leaves from different trees and occasionally shower her with water to keep her cool.
All that pampering is with a purpose – Puntung is to be nursed back to health so that she can mate with Tam, short for Kretam, a male rhino at the sanctuary. The pair promises wildlife biologists another shot at breeding the critically-endangered species in captivity; it is a last-ditch attempt to save a species which is staring at extinction.
The Sumatran rhinos (or Asian two-horned rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) are dying out as their habitat has dwindled, they are shot for their horns and increasing isolation hinders their breeding. Surveys of known rhino strongholds Taman Negara, Royal Belum State Park and Endau-rompin National Park in recent years showed no evidence of rhinos, causing some within the wildlife conservation fraternity here to believe that the animal is all but poached out in Peninsular Malaysia.
In Sabah, the population is down to less than 40, which makes the state our only hope of preventing local extinction of the species. (The only other place which harbours the species is Sumatra, which has an estimated population of 150.)
The loss of the rhino is not a modern-day occurrence. They were already being hunted in the 1900s. Vetting old newspapers on Sabah, wildlife biologist Dr Junaidi Payne finds that rhinos were routinely hunted in the early 1900s, during which 20 rhino horns were exported annually. From the 1960s to the 90s, the hunt continued as people still coveted rhino horns as folk remedies, plus there was an added threat – loss of rhino habitat as forests were cleared for timber and conversion to human settlements, farms and plantations.
Today, major deforestation has slowed down somewhat, so loss of habitat is no longer the main threat to rhinos, according to Payne. Rather, it is their dwindling numbers and isolation which prevent breeding, stifling any possibility of expanding the population. Which is why a group of wildlife conservationists has formed the Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) to spearhead a captive breeding programme at Tabin, as a last recourse for the species.
“The problem now is that most remaining rhinos are infertile and too old to breed, and too scattered to meet and breed,” says Payne, executive director of Bora. “Most are solitary, just living out their lives. When a species declines to such low numbers, the only way to boost numbers and birth rate above death rate may be to bring some individuals togeth- er to increase the prospects for breeding. “Some people say the way to protect them is in the wild. We did that in the 80s, but the numbers still went down. Clearly (just) protecting and monitoring rhinos is a recipe for witnessing their extinction. So, there is only one priority, which is to make them breed.”
In the case of Puntung, she is unlikely to breed in the wild as monitoring work since 2007 shows that she never leaves her 15sqkm territory and no males venture there either; hence a decision was made in late 2009 to trap her.
Unsuccessful mating
Catching endangered wild animals to breed them in captive conditions is controversial but Payne points out that that was exactly how and why the African and Indian rhinos did not go extinct in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nonetheless, wariness lingers over the practice as past attempts, thwarted by poor husbandry and uncertainties, saw little success.
Between 1984 and 1994, 40 rhinos were captured in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah under an International Union for Conservation of Nature-led rhino rescue project. The animals ended up in European and American zoos, and in breeding facilities in their home states.
Most, however, fared badly in captivity and died from various diseases and old age. (In hindsight, the experts 30 years ago did not know enough about the rhino’s nutritional needs and reproductive health. In the wild, rhinos eat some 200 species of leaves, some of which contain compounds which bind iron. In captivity, the diet is not as varied, leading to iron accumulation and eventually, diseases.)