Apart from the two female Sumatran rhinos captured in 2011 and 2014 in Malaysia, the Natural History Museum of Demark said no animal of the same specie was detected since 2007.
Advertisement
In a study featured in the Oryx, the worldwide Journal of Conservation, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, the global Rhino Foundation, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) carried out a survey of remaining Sumatran rhinos in the wild. Despite the decades of conservation efforts, the numbers are low and continue to decline. One is in the Cincinnati Zoo in U.S.A, soon to be moved to Indonesia, three are held at facilities in Sabah, Malaysia for attempts to produce embryos by in vitro fertilization, and five are in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Sumatra, Indonesia.
The rarest and smallest species of rhinoceros, the Sumatran rhino, has been declared extinct in Malaysia.
“Population viability analysis done during the Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit in 2013 suggested that the species stands a good chance of survival if there are at least 30 adult rhinos with a birth interval of three years or less”. And sadly, it appears that the species has, in fact, gone extinct in Malaysia.
Havmøller said that this single program includes individual rhinos now being cared for in captivity. Now scientists have asserted that the animal is extinct in the wild there.
“Serious effort by the government of Indonesia should be put to strengthen rhino protection by creating Intensive Protection Zone, intensive survey of the current known habitats, habitat management, captive breeding, and mobilizing national resources and support from related local governments and other stakeholders”, comments Widodo Ramono, who co-authored a paper listing this issue. This trend echoes how the Sumatran rhino population dropped from around 500 to extinction between 1980 and 2005 in Sumatra’s largest protected area, the enormous Kerinci Sebelat National Park.
Although rhinos used to roam freely across most of South-east Asia, they have been relentlessly poached due to the value of their horns on the black market.
Advertisement
In the past, Sumatran rhinos could be found across southeast Asia. With less than one hundred rhinos present in the Indonesian wildlife and only nine in captivity, their future does not seem that bright, researchers say.
