As years of extensive surveys have proven fruitless in finding any sign of Sumatran rhinoceros in the forests of Malaysia, officials made the sad declaration this week that the iconic animal has likely gone extinct in the wild there.
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In a new report in the journal Oryx, the scientists wrote that despite catching two rhinos in 2011 and 2014, there were none left in the Malaysia’s jungles.
Driven by poaching, the Sumatran rhinoceros is now extinct in the wild in Malaysia, says a study by leading scientists and experts in the field of rhino conservation.
In addition to wild populations, nine Sumatran rhinos are in captivity.
The recent announcement highlights the importance of increased conservation efforts in Indonesia to prevent the same thing from occurring there.
This means that all rhinos are managed through a single program that is administered across global and national borders to maximize the animals’ birth rate overall. “This includes the individuals now held in captivity”, the paper’s lead author, University of Copenhagen PhD student Rasmus Gren Havmøller, said in a press release. This was observed from 1980 to 2005 in Sumatra’s Kerinci Sebelat National Park, a 1,379,100 hectare protected area. That’s where fewer than 100 individuals in total are estimated to live in three separate populations, one of which has seen a critical decline in distribution range of 70 percent over the last decade. According to study co-author Christy Williams, “The tiger in India was saved from extinction due to the direct intervention of Mrs. Gandhi, the then prime minister, who set up Project Tiger”.
“Serious effort by the government of Indonesia should be put to strengthen rhino protection by creating Intensive Protection Zone (IPZ), intensive survey of the current known habitats, habitat management, captive breeding, and mobilizing national resources and support from related local governments and other stakeholders”, Widodo Ramono, co-author and Director of the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia (YABI), said in a statement.
The nine in captivity span across several countries with one is held in the Cincinnati Zoo in the United States, three in Sabbah, Malaysia and five in a rhino sanctuary in Sumatra, Indonesia.
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The rhinos are described by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) as the smallest of all rhinos – and it is the only Asian rhino with two horns.
