The last survivors
> Efforts to save the remaining three Sumatran rhinoceroses in Malaysia are featured in a new National Geographic series
number of tumours in her reproductive organs, meaning that the chances of her getting pregnant at all were virtually zero.
Despite the heartbreak, the team at Bora knew the only hope of saving the Sumatran rhino species was by in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and so they harvested eggs from the female rhinos, Iman and Putong, as well as sperms from the male, Tam.
These specimens are currently stored in liquid nitrogen in the hopes that someday they will be used to help breed new Sumatran rhinos with help from conservationists in Indonesia, where there are less than one hundred of these rhinos left.
Payne says: “In wildlife conservation ... there is the view that if you have protected areas like Taman Negara or Tapin Wildlife Reserve, then everything will be all right.
“To some extent, it made sense in the past, but to me, it is becoming clear as the decades go by, that the larger mammals are going to go extinct in the long run because the size of the protected area is too small.”
Payne adds that poaching and shrinking habitats are only part of the story. There are also just not enough births.
He says: “What we are doing now is a precursor of more active management of big mammals in the future. It is catching a small number and using IVF to grow their numbers.
“I don’t think there are any wildlife conservationists elsewhere who are thinking along the same lines.”
Zainal believes the reason our Sumatran rhinos are not reproducing is pathology-related.
He explains that these animals are loners and if a female does not mate when she hits sexual maturity (around age six or seven), she will develop reproductive problems.
Bora believes that the best option now for these animals is to place fertilised embryos from our rhinos into a female rhino from Indonesia for gestation.
The process is tricky, but that seems the only hope left for our three rhinos.