Daily Express, 15 Jan 2012

Borneo Post. January 15 2012

Borneo Post, Jan 15 2012

Borneo Sumatran rhino Puntung in her temporary enclosure in the Tabin forest.

It is hailed as a Christmas miracle which spells hope of survival for the almost extinct Borneo Sumatran rhinoceros. After three years of searching, the Sabah Wildlife Department and the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA) have announced that they have captured a young female one in the Sabah rainforest. Named “Puntung”, she is between 20 and 30 years old. And she has been airlifted into a forest enclosure of 20 hectares in the Tabin Wildlife Forest Reserve where she is expected to mate with Tam, a 20-year-old rhino which was rescued in 2008 while wandering in an oil palm estate.

“It is an ideal age for breeding,” says Junaidi Payne, executive director of BORA. But previous attempts in the 1980s and 90s to breed Borneo Sumatran rhinos in captivity failed. Payne is “cautiously optimistic” that this time it might succeed.

He notes that they don’t seem to mate in the wild. “We have monitored her since 2007 and there is no sign that any other rhino has entered her range in the past five years,” Payne says.

Nobody knows how many Borneo Sumatran rhinos remain; but wildlife officials say there may be less than 40 of them. – Insight Sabah (29 Dec 2011).

Picture shows Datuk Michael Emban (third from left) receiving a memento from Professor Dr Abdul Hamid Ahmad (left), Chairman of the BORA board of directors during the courtesy call. Also in the picture are Dr Sen Nathan (second from left), BORA Executive Director Datuk Dr Junaidi Payne (fourth from left), Deputy Permanent Secretary Mr William Baya,  and Assistant Secretary (Environment) Mr Edip Abun.

It is not too late to draw lessons from the continuing decline of the Sumatran rhino

Not long after news last month of the extinction of the Javan rhino on mainland Asia last year, the extinction of the western black rhino in Africa was announced on Nov 11.

Tam currently has 2.5 hectares to himself. Photo by Jeremy Hance

In that most recent announcement, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) experts noted that the next rhino likely to go extinct is the northern white rhino, a central African subspecies of white rhino.

How is this relevant to Malaysia? The last Javan rhino in Peninsular Malaysia was shot in 1932. Since the 1930s, Malaysia’s most endangered wildlife species has been the Sumatran rhino. The Sumatran rhino still survives in Malaysia, but is now close to extinction.

In 1984, an international meeting of Sumatran rhino experts was convened in Singapore under the aegis of IUCN, and an agreement was forged for collaboration between the governments of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, Indonesia and a number of overseas zoos to work to prevent the extinction of this species

The agreement involved the establishment of protected areas that still contained small wild rhino populations, and a programme of captive breeding, involving rhinos to be taken from areas which at that time were under forest but allocated for conversion to plantations.

In several ways, the plans worked out. In the 1980s, Sabah established the Tabin Wildlife Reserve and Danum Valley conservation area, while Indonesia set up national parks in areas containing Sumatran rhinos.

The New Straits Times editorial of Sept 11, 1985 entitled “A survival kit for the rhino” gave a remarkably pragmatic and balanced opinion of the plan, stating that “in matters of conservation, there is little room for parochial attitudes and meaningless slogans about national heritage. Malaysia holds in trust for the whole world some of the rarest and most interesting wildlife.

Malaysia cannot take the risk of unwittingly allowing it to have the dubious distinction of being known as the last place on earth where the Sumatran rhino roamed”.

Unfortunately, that sentiment went unheeded. A number of Malaysian non-governmental organisations slammed the captive breeding component, mainly over the fear that our rhinos might end up in the United States, and the Sabah government withdrew from the agreement. Peninsular Malaysia and Indonesia enjoyed some collaboration but in many respects charted their own courses for the rhinos.

A total of 40 Sumatran rhinos were captured between 1984 and 1994 in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah. The upshot, however, was that of 18 rhinos caught in Indonesia, only one pair bred, producing three babies in Cincinnati Zoo, the oldest of which has been returned to Indonesia and is now the only breeding male in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Lampung province.

Even though nine females and three males were caught in Peninsular Malaysia and eight males and two females in Sabah, there was no transfer of rhinos between the two regions, and none bred.

Of those 20 Malaysian rhinos, only one survives today, a female which is now too old to be able to breed, although she was fertile when captured in 1994. For wild Sumatran rhinos, it is now four years since the last evidence of a birth in Malaysia

The fact that the Sumatran rhino is not already extinct can be viewed as luck or a miracle.

A last-ditch effort to save the species, the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary programme, is under way in Sabah, a government programme implemented by the Sabah Wildlife Department with support from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (for rhino reproduction), Borneo Rhino Alliance (operational) and Yayasan Sime Darby and World Wildlife Fund (financial)

What lessons may we draw from the tale of the continuing decline of the Sumatran rhino? The first is we are now well beyond the “usual suspects” of habitat loss, poaching and lack of awareness as the main threats. The problem now is that most remaining rhinos are old or infertile, and too few and too scattered to meet and breed.

The second is that once a species declines to such very low numbers, the only way to boost numbers and birth rate above death rate may be to bring some individuals into semi-natural fenced conditions. The idea is to maximise the prospect of every individual rhino to contribute to the species’ survival.

Catching rare wild animals to breed them in captive conditions with the involvement of non-governmental organisations tends to be a “politically incorrect” concept nowadays. Yet, that is exactly how and why the African and Indian rhinos did not go extinct in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was also one of the main reasons for the establishment of the World Wildlife Fund in 1961.

Thirdly, the lack of success of the 1984 IUCN-brokered collaboration agreement to save the species went off the rails largely because of a lack of close collaboration between all the parties involved.

So, the third lesson is: the need for open and whole-hearted collaboration, collaboration and collaboration, so that all parties are armed with all the latest information and thinking, so as to be able to choose the best way forward through the maze of opinions, partial information, assumptions, egos and government policies.

This time, a generation after a most sensible public statement was published in the NST on how to save the Sumatran rhino, let’s get it right. Otherwise, Malaysia will be able to announce the extinction of the species in just another generation from now.

Read more: Last ditch bid to save the rhinos – Columnist – New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/last-ditch-bid-to-save-the-rhinos-1.8370#ixzz1eG2F6JSJ

Despite dedicated efforts to protect this species from poaching over the past few decades, within protected areas in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah, numbers have continued to decline. Most specialists close to the situation now believe that habitat loss and poaching no longer represent the major threats to the survival of this rhino. Instead, numbers are so very low that factors associated with low numbers, including inability to find a fertile mate, pathology of the reproductive organs in females resulting in no pregnancies, inbreeding and skewed sex ratio, mean that for many years, rhino death rate has been exceeding birth rate. If this is so, then protection of the remaining wild rhinos and their habitat are necessary but insufficient measures to prevent the species extinction.

In a paper titled “Now or never: what will it take to save the Sumatran rhinoceros Dicerorhinus sumatrensis from extinction?” published in the international conservation journal Oryx earlier in 2011, Ahmad Zafir and his colleagues in WWF-Malaysia, Sabah Wildlife Department and Yayasan Badak Indonesia, wrote the following: “Recent data from governments, NGOs and researchers indicate that the global Sumatran rhino population could be as low as 216, a decline from about 320 estimated in 1995. Based on lessons learnt and expert opinions we call on decision makers involved in Sumatran rhino conservation to focus on a two-pronged approach for conservation of the species: (1) the translocation of wild rhinos from existing small, isolated or threatened forest patches into semi-in situ captive breeding programmes, and (2) a concomitant enhancement of protection and monitoring capacities in priority areas that have established these breeding facilities or have recorded relatively high population estimates and track encounter rates. At least USD 1.2 million is required to implement this two-pronged strategy annually in four priority areas: Bukit Barisan Selatan and Way Kambas National Parks on Sumatra, and Danum Valley Conservation Area and Tabin Wildlife Reserve on Sabah.” The Borneo Rhino Sanctuary programme is already underway in Sabah, based on those two approaches, and implemented by Sabah Wildlife Department with assistance from other agencies including Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Berlin), Yayasan Sime Darby, WWF-Malaysia and Borneo Rhino Alliance, a recently established Malaysian NGO dedicated to saving the rhinos in Sabah. A similar programme has been underway in Indonesia for more than a decade.

The extinction of the Vietnam rhino suggests that leaving rhinos in the wild to be poached or die of old age is no longer an adequate approach. Instead, the Indonesian and Malaysian approach for the Sumatran rhinoceros is most likely now the only way forward to prevent the extinction of this species. Why bother to save the species? The argument is ethical, not economic. Fossils show that something very similar to this form of rhino has existed for about 20 million years, and we may be only a decade or two away from its extinction if no active interventions are made. Now that we know the situation, we ought to try to prevent extinction before that opportunity is lost. Is it worth the money? Ahmad Zafir and colleagues put that question in context, noting in their paper that the annual cost of running the ongoing programmes in Sumatra and Sabah is equivalent to the amount paid at an auction in USA in 2010 for a 1939 edition of a Batman comic book.

We surely do not want Malaysia to have to announce in a couple of decades from now news similar to that from Vietnam last month. Let’s recognise that efforts to promote the survival of the Sumatran rhinoceros ought to be made a national conservation priority.

This joint statement is signed off by the following organisations:

Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA)

Land Empowerment Animals People (LEAP)

Resources Stewardship Consultants Sdn. Bhd. (RESCU)

Malaysian Nature Society (MNS)

TRAFFIC Southeast Asia

WWF-Malaysia

Now or never: what will it take to save the Sumatran rhinoceros Dicerorhinus sumatrensis from extinction?

-Abdul Wahab Ahmad Zafir, Junaidi Payne, Azlan Mohamed, Ching Fong Lau, Dionysius Shankar Kumar Sharma, Raymond Alfred, Amirtharaj Christy Williams, Senthival Nathan, Widodos Ramono and Gopalasamy Reuben Clements.

Copyright notice: Cambridge University Press

Read the full article.

We’re sure many of you know that one of the world’s most magnificent and docile creatures, the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), is in deep trouble.

But just how bad is it? From a population of around 320 estimated in 1995, experts now say it could be down to as low as 216 individuals.

One of Rimba’s researchers, Reuben, was involved in a review published recently in the international journal Oryx. This paper was led by Ahmad Zafir Abdul Wahab (currently doing his PhD based at Universiti Sains Malaysia; ahmad.zafir@gmail.com) to find out what needs to be done to save this species from extinction. The consensus is that:

1) Wild individuals have to be captured and put in carefully managed forests that are as large and natural as possible.

2) There has to be an urgent injection of government and private funding to improve protection and monitoring capacities of agencies  working on rhino conservation in four priority areas: Bukit Barisan Selatan and Way Kambas National Parks in Sumatra, and Danum Valley Conservation Area and Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah.

Once this basic level of funding is secured for these priority areas, more funds need to be channeled towards a search party to determine the status of rhinos in two other important areas, Gunung Leuser in Sumatra and Taman Negara in Peninsular Malaysia.

Just how much are we talking about for this basic level of funding? Only USD1.2 million! Pocket change for some people, especially the guy who bought a 1939 Batman comic for the same price at an auction in Dallas, back in February 2010.

Surely the price of the Sumatran rhino’s existence is worth much more than a comic book? Surely governments and noble companies can put together a fraction of their GDPs and annual revenues to save this species?

Although the Sumatran rhino has a negative SAFE index of -1.36 and is tipping over into the chasm of extinction, there have been positive historical examples of rebounding rhino populations:

In southern Africa, white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) rebounded from just 20-50 individuals in the early 1900s to around 17,480 individuals today.

In India and Nepal, Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) rebounded from only 200 individuals at the turn of the 20th century to around 2,575 individuals today.

Recovering from 216 individuals is by no means easy in this day and age, but history has shown it’s possible.

Please contact organizations actively engaged in Sumatran rhino conservation like the Borneo Rhino Alliance or International Rhino Foundation if you want to help preserve the existence of the Sumatran rhino. It’s now or never…

Full citation: Ahmad Zafir, A. W., Azlan, M., Lau, C. F., Sharma, D. S. K., Payne, J., Alfred, R., Williams, A. C., Nathan, S., Ramono, W. S., and Clements, R.G. 2011. Now or never: what will it take to save the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) from extinction? ORYX 45: 225-233.