August 2025

The Sumatran rhino is the smallest of all rhino species. It’s a two-horned rhino, covered with hair and is the closest living relative of the woolly rhinos from the ice age. Two-horned hairy rhinos have lived for millions of years and once roamed across most of South-east Asia, from southern China to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

But today, the Sumatran rhino is tragically close to extinction. Less than 100 are left.

In Indonesia, there are probably fewer than 80 individuals, with seven in managed facilities, and others scattered across the wild in at least six sites. While in Malaysia, the situation is even more dire. There are only three Sumatran rhinos left, and they are being cared for in the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary, located in Sabah.

Why is it under threat?

Due to a thousand years of relentless hunting throughout Asia for their horns, Sumatran rhino numbers were severely depressed by the early twentieth century.  Habitat loss from human population growth and farming further affected the population. But these two problems have combined to create a different threat – a lack of breeding.

There are now too few rhinos left, and they are scattered across the wild. Unable to find each other, there is no breeding. This results in a severe decline of rhino births. And over the past century, the annual death rate of the Sumatran rhino has far exceeded the birth rate. Pushing the Sumatran rhino right to the edge of extinction.

The traditional conservation measures of awareness, reducing poaching and focussing on wildlife habitat protection are far too late. The Sumatran rhino is about to go extinct because there are not enough rhinos left in the world to breed naturally.

What is BORA doing to save the species?

One thing is clear: if this rhino is to be saved from extinction, there has to be just one programme, with each rhino managed to help it produce babies. BORAʼs mission has seen them bring in rhinos from the wild, into their captive breeding facilities with the sole goal of producing baby rhinos. But with the female rhinos found to have reproductive pathologies, natural conception is not possible. As the situation is so dire, BORAʼs focus will be on advanced reproductive technology – with an emphasis on making embryos in the laboratory by in-vitro fertilization.

Teaming up with experts from Germany, Italy and Indonesia, experimental attempts are underway to create  the worldʼs first test tube Sumatran rhino embryo and implant it into a viable surrogate.

It is with great sadness that we make this announcement.

Puntung is dying of cancer.

The swelling on Puntung’s left cheek that alerted us to the infected tooth root had a more serious origin. The cancer has been spreading rapidly over the past few weeks. Specialists from several countries concur that it will be fatal, with or without treatment.

As of today, Puntung can no longer breathe through her left nostril, she can no longer vocalise, she is in pain and her condition is declining fast. Other than administering painkillers, there is nothing more anyone can do. Accordingly, the government has authorized euthanasia. This was a very difficult decision to make, but this is the best out of a very small number of unpleasant choices.

This is devastating news for all of those who have been involved in Puntung’s life over the past ten years, from those in SOS Rhino who monitored her wild in the Tabin forests since 2007, those who captured her in 2011, to those who cared for daily and still care for her right up to now.

We thank the many people – from our kind sponsors, to our staff who’re providing intensive care to her, and to all of you – who heartened us with their good wishes in April and financial support for the dental surgery and follow-up work.

We have kept in close touch with experts in Europe, South Africa and Thailand, and there is no doubt in our minds that any form of conventional treatment would just prolong her agony. We are also making preparations to try to recover eggs or oocytes from Puntung. With that, she may yet be able to contribute to the survival of her species.

Till then, we will provide her the very best of care, and help to minimize her suffering. By making her as comfortable as possible, we hope to ease the great pain we feel as well.

We’ll always remember her as a fighter. She survived a poacher’s attempt as a calf, when her foot was cut off. But she refused to give up and went on to survive in the forests. She then became pregnant in the wild, but tragically lost her baby. The complications of that pregnancy resulted in her having cysts in her uterus, but still she fought on… till the very end.

And that’s how we will honour her. By embracing her tenacity for life. We at BORA will not give up the fight to save the critically endangered Sumatran Rhino.

There are now only two left in Malaysia, and less than 100 in Indonesia. Puntung’s passing is the third captive Sumatran rhino death in the past 3.5 years. In this time, there has only been one birth in captivity. And with wild populations continuing to face risks, the number of deaths could dangerously continue to outpace the number of births.

This is the great tragedy that’s at our doorstep. One that we must fight. But we can’t do this alone. Humanity needs to come together, now more than ever. What we do today will define the very existence of an entire species. It will define who we are as people, a species who have the power to save the rest of life that we share this world with.

And just like Puntung, we at BORA will not give up.

Be at peace, Puntung.

CINCINNATI, OH (September 6, 2009) – “Emi”, the world’s most famous endangered Sumatran rhino, passed away yesterday morning at the age of 21 at her home at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. The female Sumatran rhino lived at the Cincinnati Zoo for the past 14 years and produced three calves, Andalas (2001), Suci (2004) and Harapan (2007). In 2001, years of breakthrough research by scientists at the Zoo’s Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) resulted in the first captive birth of a Sumatran rhino since the 19th century.

“No animal has been more beloved than Emi in the 134 year history of the Cincinnati Zoo,” said Thane Maynard, Director of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. “She is the most famous rhino in the world and has led the way in the effort to establish a successful captive breeding program for this critically endangered animal. My fondest hope is that we now build on Emi’s legacy and increase our efforts tenfold to continue the global effort to save the Sumatran rhino.”

In March, the Zoo’s Animal Care Staff first noticed that Emi’s appetite was inconsistent; she had less energy and had lost some weight. Concerned Zoo Veterinarians performed a complete physical exam with blood work in early April. Her examination was unremarkable, but blood work indicated some subtle changes in her liver function. Veterinary staff continued to conduct a battery of diagnostic tests and consulted with numerous rhino experts worldwide in an attempt to determine a cause for her clinical signs. In May, Emi’s attitude improved, her appetite picked up, and she gained some weight back. However, overall, her appetite and attitude had been inconsistent and despite various treatments administered, her condition continued to deteriorate. On the day of her death a thorough post mortem exam was performed. Tissue samples will be submitted to a veterinary pathologist to help determine a cause of death.

“It is always devastating when an animal reaches the end of its life, especially those that are so special, but Emi could not have been in better hands all these years,” said Dr. Terri Roth, Director of the Cincinnati Zoo’s CREW. Our Veterinary staff has been working tirelessly for months to identify the source of Emi’s illness, and our keeper staff has done everything possible to support Emi on a daily basis during our struggle to save this rhino.”

A decade ago, little was known about caring for the critically endangered Sumatran rhinos in captivity, let alone their mating habits and reproductive cycles. But Cincinnati Zoo staff, led by Dr. Terri Roth, have relied on the use of ultrasound, close monitoring of hormone levels and years of patient observation and trial-and-error to learn how to successfully breed the Sumatran rhinos.

Emi’s first calf, Andalas, was the first Sumatran rhino bred and born in captivity in 112 years.

Repeating that success with the birth of a second calf, Suci, in 2004, was absolutely essential to validate the scientific methods developed at the Cincinnati Zoo and for the continued progress of the captive breeding program. In 2007, Emi gave birth to an unprecedented third calf, Harapan, again raising hopes among conservationists that the captive breeding could play an important role in the species’ recovery.

Andalas, now almost 8 years of age, was transported to the Way Kambas Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia in 2007 to take part in an international breeding program. The Sanctuary has been in close consultation with the Cincinnati Zoo. The methodology that has proven successful at the Cincinnati Zoo is being adapted to the conditions at the Sanctuary. With the arrival of Andalas, the options for reproduction have increased dramatically and the Sanctuary is poised for success. Rhino experts are hopeful that he will successfully breed with the females at the Sanctuary to achieve pregnancies and offspring.

The Cincinnati Zoo is the only place in the world to successfully breed this critically endangered species in captivity. Two out of the three Sumatran rhinos living in the United States, five-year-old Suci and her father, Ipuh, reside at the Cincinnati Zoo. Harapan moved to the White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida in 2008. Emi and Ipuh were both sent to the U.S. by the Indonesian government as part of a cooperative agreement developed between Indonesia and four U.S. zoos (Cincinnati, Bronx, Los Angeles and San Diego).

Considered the most endangered of all rhino species and perhaps the most endangered mammal species on earth, it is estimated that at least 60 percent of the Sumatran rhino population has been lost in the last two decades. The primary cause is conversion of rhino habitat for agriculture, even in some national parks, and poaching for its horn which some Asian cultures believe contains medicinal properties. Today, there are only nine Sumatran rhinos living in captivity worldwide and fewer than 200 animals exist in isolated pockets of Sabah, Malaysia and the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Sumatran rhinos can live 35-40 years.

The Cincinnati Zoo is working closely with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, the Indonesian Rhino Foundation, the IUCN Asian Rhino Specialist Group and the International Rhino Foundation, to protect this species in the wild, and also propagate Sumatran rhinos in captivity. Both approaches will be necessary to secure the future of this critically endangered species for future generations.

In Loving Memory of Emi: A dedication to Emi written by Dr Terri Roth of the Cincinnati Zoo

Sumatran rhinos are indeed likely to become extinct … but stopping poaching without boosting birth rate will not save the species — Borneo Rhino Alliance

Ceratotherium simum (White rhino), Dicerus bicornis (Black Rhino), Rhinoceros unicornis (Indian rhino) and Dicerorhinus sumatrensis (Sumatran rhino) belong to the same family, just as humans, orang-utans, gorillas and chimpanzees belong to the same family but belong to different genera. We would not presume that the same techniques should be used to promote breeding in all four ape species. Or that what was true in 1980s is the same as in 2015. Or that what is true in Kenya (for example) is true in Malaysia (for example). So there is no reason to treat rhinos as one big homogeneous type of animal with the same issues globally. Each species is different. The Sumatran rhino is the most different of all: it is about to go extinct … not primarily as a result of poaching but primarily because there are not enough births … and this has been the main problem for many decades.

Certainly, we cannot discount poaching. But there is no point in putting most of our efforts into preventing poaching if we are not putting even greater efforts into making more Sumatran rhino babies. You would think that that is common sense.

There is a misconception that more data are needed on wild Sumatran rhinos in order to imagine the best way to save the species from extinction. It does not matter if there are 37 or 57 or 127 Sumatran rhinos remaining (except that, if there are indeed “more studies”, those who think there might be more than 100 Sumatran rhinos are surely in for a nasty surprise. Every effort to estimate Sumatran rhino numbers in the wild after 1980 has resulted in wildly optimistic over-estimates).

To those who wish to deploy camera traps and get faeces to analyse for DNA: “Doing that will not give us any data of use in deciding on policy”. For a solitary and extremely rare animal (in most places where cameras are set, there will be only 0, 1 or 2 rhinos) there is NO way to estimate numbers in the wild. And even if someone does produce an estimate, we have no way of knowing of those individuals are fully fertile or if they are involved in breeding.

The points to bear in mind are: the number of Sumatran rhinos left is getting close to zero; the number that are fertile adults ready to breed is almost zero; the species WILL go extinct if ways are not found and IMPLEMENTED to boost the birth rate above that we have seen since 1980. Those points apply to both wild Sumatran rhinos and to the nine in captive conditions.

The difference between the wild and captive rhinos, however, is profound: we have no idea at all of the actual numbers, fertility, relatedness or frequency of mating (if any) of any wild rhinos. But with the -existence of a single collaborative programme – every rhino in fenced, managed conditions – can contribute to the goal of producing more babies. Even rhinos that cannot breed naturally can contribute.

In Sabah, sperm and eggs have been harvested successfully from Sumatran rhinos that otherwise would have no hope of contributing to production of babies. We in BORA agree that in vitro fertilization is NOT the solution for saving almost any other species from extinction. In fact, it is irrelevant and not even part of the solution for almost all species. But the Sumatran rhino is different. Every possible method known to man has to be used to produce more baby rhinos. Successful in vitro fertilization leading to embryo production is not unknown to man.

Let’s do it.

Filepic of Tam being coaxed into a trap with leaves. He was found wandering in an oil palm plantation in Kretam, Sabah in 2008

This commentary by rhino expert John Payne urges the use of all available technologies to raise birth rates of Sumatran rhinos where they persist in Sabah and Sumatra. 14 January 2016 / Commentary by John Payne The announcement on 9 December 2015 of the first births of healthy puppy dogs from in vitro fertilization was … Continue reading Reproductive technology (and understanding of experimental psychology) needed to save a critically endangered rhino

Sabah Wildlife Department comes under the Sabah State Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment. In 2011, the Ministry welcomed a new Permanent Secretary, Datuk Michael Emban, who is also Chairman of the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary (BRS) programme steering committee. BORA made a courtesy call on Datuk Michael on 23 May 2011 with Sabah Wildlife Department Assistant Director Dr Sen Nathan to outline progress of the BRS programme.

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.

A rhino “caught” on video was subsequently caught in real life, having walked out of the forest into an oil palm plantation, from which it refused to return to the forest. This rhino, a mature male named Kretam, or Tam for short, was enticed into a crate and moved into a small paddock in Tabin Wildlife Reserve on 13 August 2008.

His tameness indicated that this rhino was experiencing a problem. Specifically, it was decided to capture Tam because he had a visible injury to the right front leg, which turned out to be from a snare trap. This injury was treated successfully after capture.

On the advice of veterinarians who work at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas, Sumatra, Indonesia, a 2.5 hectare extension to the paddock was built, encompassing forest and a small seasonal stream. The cost of building the new paddock was borne jointly by Sabah Forestry Department, WWF and Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment. This site is now the “transit area” for Tam and for additional rhinos that may be caught in the future.

An article by Jeremy Hance July/August 2018 in AramcoWorld. Read the full article on their website.  

At four o’clock in the morning on May 12, 2016, Zulfi Arsan balanced himself on a tall fence post, poised to jump into a pen with a rhinoceros.

As lead veterinarian of the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (srs) on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, he watched as the rhino named Ratu gave birth to her second calf. The calf, who later would be named Delilah, was coming out wrong—hind feet first. This meant the umbilical cord could strangle her. Arsan was ready to try to help.

A minute passed. Then, a breath. And another.

Thus was Delilah born, the youngest Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, the smallest, oldest and most endangered species of rhinoceros in the world. With fewer than 100 left of her kind, her first breaths gave hope that Sumatran rhinos still could be saved from extinction, largely thanks to advances in science and the day-to-day work of men and women like Arsan.
 

Lanky and handsome with a black beard and smiling eyes, Arsan, 42, has a ready grin, and in conversation he can jump easily from the technicalities of Sumatran rhino physiology to a chat about a particular animal’s personality.

“The more I know, the more I love about the Sumatran rhino,” Arsan says. He grew up with animals, both wild and domestic—including a favorite pet heron. Having decided to be a vet at a young age, Arsan graduated in 2003 from Bogor Agricultural University in West Java. As a student, he interned at the srs, located deep inside Way Kambas National Park in southern Sumatra. In 2014 he became the sanctuary’s head veterinarian.

JEREMY HANCE Two-year-old Delilah, right, is currently the youngest Sumatran rhino and only the second in recent years to have been born in captivity; in Javanese, her name means “God’s Blessing.” Working with her and her mother, Ratu, left, is veterinarian Zulfi Arsan of the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS), located in Sumatra’s Way Kambas National Park. It is a job that requires sacrifice: Arsan spends more time with the srs’s seven rhinos than he does with his own wife and four children, who live 300 kilometers away in Bogor, a suburb of Jakarta, capital of Indonesia on the island of Java. He’s with them only about eight to 10 days a month.When he tells them goodbye, he sets out on a nine-hour trip that plods though Jakarta’s traffic, ferries across the Sunda Strait and then navigates potholed, sometimes-flooded roads through the rainforest.

“As a father and a husband, it is hard to be away from my family. They need me, and also I need them,” Arsan says. “But we have to do it, and they also understand and [are] proud for what I am doing here.”

INTERNATIONAL RHINO FOUNDATION Newborn Delilah bonds with her mother, Ratu, at the SRS in May 2016.

His older children, 12 and 10, text him to check in on the rhinos. His four-year-old twins, he says, “love the rhinos.” One day he hopes to bring them to meet the rhinos in person.For the rhinos, his job carries the highest of stakes. 

There are few big mammals on the planet today closer to extinction than the Sumatran rhino. Only the vaquita porpoise, in Mexico, is closer—about a dozen vaquita are thought to remain. 

While officials estimate there are still around 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the wild—down from some 200 a decade ago—most independent experts believe the number is smaller, not more than 80 and possibly as few as 30. These are spread among four geographically disconnected populations. No one really knows if, with these numbers, any of the populations can prove sustainable. 

This makes Arsan, the team at the srs and others like them the best hope for the species. At the srs, each of the seven rhinos lives in its own 10-hectare enclosure. Two of them— Andalas and Ratu—have produced offspring, in 2012 and 2016, respectively.

With these recent successes, conservationists say what needs to happen now is to bring more wild rhinos to the srs—or similar facilities—for captive breeding. Like many big mammals, Sumatran rhinos are slow breeders: Females can give birth at most every three to four years, and gestation lasts 15 to 16 months. (Then they spend a couple of years raising the calf.) Females mature sexually at six or seven; males at 10. With a life span estimated at 40 years, a healthy female could bear seven to eight young, at best. While Arsan works to help his charges create new life, across the Java Sea, in the Malaysian state of Sabah in northern Borneo, another vet is doing all he can to preserve a life. 

Zainal Zahari Zainuddin has spent the last few months trying to heal a Sumatran rhino named Iman, one of two rhinos housed by the Borneo Rhino Alliance (bora). She and a 30-year-old male named Tam are believed to be the last Sumatran rhinos of Malaysia.

Iman was captured in 2014 after a camera trap revealed her traveling route. With a pit dug and covered, the team waited eight anxious months before they safely captured her and flew her by helicopter to the bora facility.

On first inspection, Zainuddin recalls that she looked pregnant. But it turned out to be a uterine tumor, a common problem for female Sumatran rhinos linked to the scarcity of mates.
Zainuddin, 59, came to bora in 2010 with 15 years of experience with the species. He knew something was wrong when Iman refused to leave her wallow.

INTERNATIONAL RHINO FOUNDATION A camera trap set in 2013 in Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra caught this rare image of a Sumatran rhino in the wild. JOHN PAYNE/BORA After her 2011 capture in a shallow pit in Borneo, Puntung was coaxed into this box, which was then moved by hand to a clearing, from which she was airlifted to the Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

“When they are sick, they always go back to the wallow,” says Zainuddin, who describes a wallow as a kind of “sacred place” for a rhino: Every Sumatran rhino builds one by digging out a puddle where it can enjoy a comforting mix of mud and water.

Eventually, Zainuddin and the bora staff were able to coax Iman, by then also dangerously dehydrated, out of her wallow into her night quarters, where the bora medical team could attend to her.  

Iman’s tumor had ruptured. Zainuddin feared she wouldn’t pull through.

“Some days we gave her 15 liters of fluid, and it took us eight hours to finish 30 bottles,” says Zainuddin. “It took us almost two months to get her back to near normal condition.” 

YAYASAN BADAK INDONESIA Relaxing in cool, muddy wallows at the SRS, Ratu, left, in 2012 became the first Sumatran rhino to give birth in captivity in Indonesia and only the fifth to do so worldwide; last year she gave birth to Delilah. At right, Andalas, the first Sumatran rhino to be born in captivity in more than a century, is 17 years old. He has fathered two calves with Ratu.

Iman was likely Malaysia’s last wild rhino. A year after her capture, officials declared the Sumatran rhino extinct in Sabah—their last place in the Southeast Asian country. As recently as 2008, researchers had estimated there were 50 rhinos left in Sabah. Although in hindsight this had likely been a mistake, counting wild rhinos is imprecise: They are rare and difficult to see, and their tracks are nearly identical to those of tapirs. Even a rhino wallow can be difficult to identify conclusively. The Sumatran rhino is unlike any other. Although a full-grown one weighs in at nearly a metric ton, that’s only half the weight of male African white rhinos, which also stand half a meter taller at the shoulder. A Sumatran rhino also sports a shaggy coat of sometimes-reddish hair. While it has two horns—hence its genus name Dicerorhinus, Greek for “two-horned rhinoceros”—it’s not related to Africa’s two-horned rhinos nor to either of Asia’s, the Javan or Indian rhino. 

Junaidi Payne, executive director of bora, calls the Sumatran rhino “the last living relic of the Miocene era,” which lasted from about 23 million to five million years ago—ages before we humans showed up. As a genus, he explains, Dicerorhinus split off from other rhinos around 20–25 million years ago. Despite being little known by the global public, there is nothing remotely like Dicerorhinus left on Earth.

“The Sumatran rhino is particularly special because it is the most ancient of the remaining rhino forms,” says Payne. “Most significantly, it represents a genus, not just a species or subspecies or race of rhinos.”

Two of its four surviving populations are in southern Sumatra, in Way Kambas National Park, where the srs is located, and in Bukit Barisan National Park. A third population survives in remote Aceh, at the northern end of Sumatra. A fourth population, discovered in 2013, lives across the Java Sea in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The Bukit Barisan and Kalimantan populations are the most fragile—so much so that they may be nearly, or even already, gone.

Historically, the Sumatran rhino had ranged widely in southeast Asia, as far north and west as Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. Millennia of hunting, slaughter for its horn and deforestation meant it has been all but wiped out, one by one. Yet despite this dire picture, a recent genetic study suggests that the Sumatran rhino has been struggling against extinction since 9,000 years ago, when scientists estimate a minimum of 700 survived climatic changes and, likely, hunting by early humans. In many ways, it’s amazing they had survived the Pleistocene (2.5 million to 12,000 years ago) at all when other large mammals of the epoch, including mammoths, giant sloths and wooly rhinos, had not.

A Sumatran rhino produces a sound from its larynx that experts compare to a singing whale or a whistling dolphin, as if the rhino is squeaking out a tune. The cold prospect of extinction is not merely a biological loss, says Zainuddin. It is also an emotional one: Sumatran rhinos are sophisticated communicators, gentle and lovable in their relations with humans. “They tame easily to you,” says Zainuddin. “They can associate to you and … they will accept you within the species. You can go close to them.”

This trust gives keepers the ability to train the rhino to come when called and to lie down passively when, say, they need a footbath or another procedure. Arsan calls them “clever” animals that “can learn.”

“Tam is the perfect gentleman,” Zainuddin says. When Tam eats, he always sniffs the food first and never goes “for your hand.” (In contrast, he says, Iman is a “shredder.”)

Tam has even learned to open his night-stall door by lifting the bolt with his head and moving it aside. 

“He does it so confidently,” says Zainuddin. “One flip, second flip, and door is open. He just pushes [the] door in, and he walks in. He’ll make a noise, calling for the keepers.” 

Still, behavior depends on context. Sumatran rhinos are malleable and calm in their pens because they have come to associate them with human territory. But in the wild, Sumatran rhinos will be protective of their territory.

“Every keeper and I treat the rhinos as family,” says Zainuddin. “They are never pets to us. We understand their feeling and their moods.” For example, he adds, when they are ill, “they let us handle them, and they give in to us, knowing we want them well. [They] can sense this. They are survivors and never give up hope as long as they know we are there for them.” 

Both Zainuddin and Arsan stress that each rhino has a distinctive personality, and bonds to its keepers. Zainuddin says that when he and his colleague leave the pen for a time, they hear Iman “yelling from the gate, calling for them.”

In addition to snorting through its nostrils, a Sumatran rhino produces a sound from its larynx that experts compare to a singing whale or a whistling dolphin, as if the rhino is squeaking out a tune. 
 

Arsan says he believes the rhino’s “song” is commonly used when the animal is “asking permission.” He says the rhinos tend to sing when they are waiting to be fed fruit, or wanting to leave their pens to go back to their wallows. A calf will sing out if it loses sight of its mother.

But aside from a short study in 2003 in the Cincinnati Zoo in the us, no one has researched the songs of Sumatran rhinos. 

“There is so little known,” says Susie Ellis, executive director for the International Rhino Foundation, which helps manage the srs.

“Everything that we know about their biology has been learned in the captive setting because it’s just very, very difficult to study [in the wild].”

Given their rarity and timidity, very few experts have even actually seen a wild Sumatran rhino. Neither Arsan nor Zainuddin nor Ellis have ever seen one. Payne saw one, once, in 1983. 

This paucity of knowledge makes support for captive breeding especially challenging. In the 1980s and 1990s, conservationists captured around 40 Sumatran rhinos for captive breeding, but it took 15 years just to begin to understand how they bred. By that time most of those captured had died.

BORA Keepers and veterinarians from bora collect semen from a male Sumatran rhino in hopes that the conservation team will soon be able to attempt the first in vitro fertilizations. CINCINNATI ZOO Shortly after his birth in 2001, Andalas eyed the photographer in the Cincinnati Zoo, where he was the zoo’s first Sumatran rhino birth. He was later moved to the SRS. “They tame easily to you,” says veterinarian Zainuddin. “They will accept you within the species. You can go close to them.”

Finally, on September 13, 2001, Andalas was born in the Cincinnati Zoo. He was the first Sumatran rhino birthed in captivity since the 19th century. Arsan explains that Sumatran rhino females are “induced ovulators,” which means they require something outside themselves to kick off ovulation. Biologists still aren’t certain what the female needs, but they suspect that natural breeding behavior—chasing, fighting, ramming and wallowing with a male—activates the required hormones. This is difficult to impossible to trigger if no male is around, and doubly worrisome given the high risk among females—such as Iman—for uterine cancer if they do not breed. 

“I think the normal cycle for female [rhinos] is that they are pregnant, have a baby, and then wean and then are pregnant again,” Arsan says. “Waiting is not normal.”

Tumors can lead to infertility. This has likely proven catastrophic: As wild populations declined, surviving females would meet fewer males, likely leading to a more frequent incidence of uterine tumors, all hastening the demise of the population. 

Uterine cancer has also plagued captive populations. Last summer Zainuddin had to euthanize Puntung, bora’s other female. Puntung, who had survived losing a foot in a snare as a calf, suffered from both uterine and skin cancer.

At the end, says Zainuddin, she couldn’t even sing. 

“That’s when I had to make the decision that we can’t let her go on like this,” Zainuddin says. “It’s a really hard decision to make, but it had to be made because she was suffering.”

Fortunately, Iman’s time has not come: Her condition has only improved. She has been allowed to return to her wallow, and she is eating close to her regular amounts. Still, Zainuddin is skeptical she will ever give birth. 

“What gives me hope now is that … people are realizing ‘Oh my gosh, we have this window of time that’s going to be a make-or-break window.’”

Susie Ellis, International Rhino Foundation

That makes the best chance for the bora program in vitro fertilization. borahas collected 10 eggs from Iman to date, and it hopes to secure Indonesian government approval to send them to srs to be implanted for gestation.  “We shouldn’t give up,” Zainuddin says, noting he thinks extinction can be avoided if Indonesia “acts soon” to do more.

For Arsan, his relationship to the rhino requires a dichotomy. On the one hand, he says, he loves them each individually, sometimes as if they were his own children. On the other, he knows he also has to treat them professionally as a mammal population on the brink of extinction: He has to keep his gaze on the horizon and do everything possible to keep the species going. 

“We are aware how important our work is,” Arsan says. “And we are also aware … there [are] many pressures that come with it. All eyes and ears will go to us … if bad things happen.”

In the face of such scrutiny, he and his team focus on “doing our job” and “keep[ing] our protocols.” They are in constant contact with experts around the world, and they work hard to learn from the mistakes of the past. 

History proves that dedicated people can save a species this close to extinction. Both the European bison and the Arabian oryx at one time survived only in captivity. From a population that was down to just 12 animals, the bison is today more than 2,000 strong in the wild, and it thrives in several European countries. Like the Sumatran rhino, it is a rare survivor of the Pleistocene, having avoided the fate of mammoths and cave bears. The Arabian oryx is now more than 1,000 strong, and it has been reintroduced into the wild in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan and Israel. 

Payne believes the best chance to save the Sumatran rhino now would be “one program, managed by experts” with the goal to “boost births by any and all means possible.” 

TIFFANY ROUFS At about 35 years old, Bina is the senior female at the SRS. She lived in the Bengkulu province of Sumatra, once home to a significant population of rhinos, and in 1991 she was taken to the SRS as part of its effort to begin its captive breeding program.

“What gives me hope now is that … people are realizing ‘Oh my gosh, we have this window of time that’s going to be a make-or-break window,’” says Ellis. This year, she adds, she has seen increased attention and funding for the species. 

Thus nothing brings on unbridled celebration more than the birth of a healthy calf. 

At the srs, all eyes remain on not-so-little-anymore Delilah, who turned two this May. She is healthy, playful and, according to Arsan, more independent than her older brother.

“Delilah loves to be touched and rubbed, and she knows and trusts us who care for her daily,” he says.

She is spending less and less time with her mother, and soon they will part—just as they do in the wild. And in about four years, when she’s ready, Arsan hopes she can bear children. 

Her name, Delilah, was chosen by Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. In Javanese, the name means “God’s blessing.” It’s an aptly optimistic choice for one shouldering hopes from both her own 20-million-year-old species as well a much younger fellow mammal—from among which a few individuals are dedicating their working lives to her songs and those of her future kin.

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s only hope to save its critically endangered Sumatran Rhinos is to have the planned in vitro fertilization (IVF) programme to proceed as soon as possible, or start finding alternative methods.

Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) executive director Datuk Dr John Payne, who is among those trying to get help from the Indonesian government for this purpose, said he and a team of researchers will not stop asking Indonesia for help until they succeed.

However, according to a Mongabay online report, the Indonesian government has decided to put off the plan due to technical reasons among others.

Bearing in mind that Sabah’s last two rhinos – Iman (female) in her 20s, and Tam (male) in his 30s – could be dead before help actually arrives, Dr Payne said they have no choice but to keep pushing for it.

“These rhinos are at the brink of extinction and if we really care about this species, we must put whatever differences aside and just think of the Sumatran Rhinos’ future above all else,” he said.

“We will continue and persistently try to get Indonesia to work together for this purpose, we can only hope that the person in charge of this at the moment can understand how crucial the matter is,” Dr Payne said.

He said the current head of biodiversity in Indonesia was a woman veterinarian and he prays she would take a more intelligent approach in this matter and help save the dying species.

If all else fails and Sabah’s two remaining rhinos die, he said the next thing possible was to use preserved living genomes as cell cultures and as frozen gametes in the hope that future developments in cell biology can make use of those to make embryos.

“We can also go for cloning but of course there are ethical matters involved and I am not sure if we are ready to go as far as this,” Dr. Payne said.

The Mongabay report also said that among the reasons the Indonesian government has decided to put the plan on hold was because Iman could not produce viable eggs.

“But we have been trying to get sperm from the Indonesia rhinos for so long and there has always been some sort of ‘reasoning’ for it,” Dr Payne said.

Iman and Tam are not able to mate as Iman is still recuperating from uterus cancer and Iman’s sperm is of poor quality due to old age.

The animals are already considered extinct in the wild in Sabah, whereas there is an estimated less than 100 of them left in Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment minister Datuk Christina Liew said the state will not give up and would continue asking Indonesia for assistance while sourcing for alternative methods.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said the department was also working closely with Bora and other agencies to prevent Sabah’s two remaining rhinos in captivity from going extinct.

“Our team has monitored the grounds with the hope of spotting any new or live rhinos in the wild, but there is none,” he said.

Read the article on The Star Online.

An article by Basten Gokkon published in Mongabay on 10 October 2018

• Indonesia says a long-awaited program to breed Sumatran rhinos through IVF has been postponed, citing the lack of viable eggs from a female rhino in Malaysia.
• The news becomes the latest setback in the years-long saga between the two countries, with some conservationists in Malaysia blaming the Indonesian government inaction for the dwindling odds of a successful artificial insemination attempt.
• There are only an estimated 40 to 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, scattered on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

JAKARTA — Hopes for a long-awaited collaboration between Indonesia and Malaysia to breed the near-extinct Sumatran rhino are fading fast, as the last of the species languish amid government inaction.

Conservationists in both countries have long pushed for in vitro fertilization of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis). Indonesia is home to an estimated 100 individuals, at most, while Malaysia has just two. Under their plan, researchers hope to use sperm from one of Indonesia’s captive male rhinos to fertilize eggs from the lone remaining female of the species in Malaysia.

But those efforts have been stymied as the Indonesian government continues to hold out against making the sperm available or applying for a permit that would allow Malaysia to send over the eggs, according to some observers in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, officials in Indonesia point to fertility problems in Malaysia’s rhinos to explain the lack of progress. In the latest blow to the program, the Indonesian environment ministry’s head of conservation, Wiratno, said the IVF plan had been postponed because the Malaysian female rhino, Iman, who is being treated for a tumor in her uterus, ceased to produce viable eggs.

“It’s pending,” Wiratno told Mongabay in Jakarta. “No [viable] eggs are formed.”

Officials from the Sabah Wildlife Department, in Malaysian Borneo, reported last December that Iman had suffered a ruptured tumor in her uterus, leading to massive bleeding. Since then, however, an intensive regimen of medical treatment and feeding has raised hopes about her prospects for recovery.

Conservationists and officials in Sabah are hoping that Iman, whom experts believe to be fertile, can recover and resume supplying fertile eggs for in vitro fertilization attempts.

Though the IVF program has long focused on transferring sperm samples from Indonesia to Malaysia, scientists from both countries have recently agreed on a plan to ship Iman’s eggs to Indonesia and attempt to produce embryos there.

Widodo Ramono, executive director of the Indonesia Rhino Foundation (YABI), told Mongabay that there was supposed to be a transfer of eggs from Sabah to Indonesia this past April.

“Every month we receive [a] report from Sabah that there aren’t any oocytes ready,” he told Mongabay on Oct. 8. “Iman is getting weaker, the chance is getting slimmer.”

As for access to the sperm taken from two males at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia, conservationists in Sabah say the Indonesian government continues to stall. This despite Wiratno indicating this past January that Indonesia was amenable to sharing sperm samples, after previously ignoring Malaysian requests.

A Sumatran rhino and calf in Way Kambas National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

John Payne, executive director of the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA), said he was disappointed to hear the latest news from Indonesia about the suspension of the IVF program.

“I am utterly speechless,” Payne told Mongabay in an email on Oct. 3. “The reality is that Sabah has done everything humanly possible since 2013 to promote collaboration on Sumatran rhino through application of advanced reproductive technology.”

He said conservationists in Malaysia only needed the Indonesian government’s assurances that it would make “good quality sperm” available for the program. Indonesia would also have to apply to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for the necessary permit to allow Malaysia to send any eggs over.

If these requests had been acted on much sooner, the likelihood of obtaining viable eggs from Iman, and inseminating them with sperm taken from the SRS males, would have been much higher.

“Every year and every month, [the] prospects to get eggs are lower,” Payne said.

A female rhino with her calf at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas. Image by Susie Ellis/IRF.

The languishing of the IVF program comes as scientists in Germany report successproducing embryos of an African species, the white rhino, through IVF. Before this, this form of assisted reproduction technique remained unproven in rhinos, and some experts were skeptical it could be perfected in time to stall the extinction of a species.

A successful attempt at producing a viable Sumatran rhino embryo through IVF would add much-needed diversity to the captive population. Four of the seven rhinos at the SRS, including all of the males, are closely related. Iman, meanwhile, comes from a population in Borneo that was once considered a separate subspecies, and which has been genetically separated from the Sumatran populations for thousands of years.

There’s a growing urgency to step up the captive-breeding program for the critically endangered species, compelled by the death in June last year of Puntung, Malaysia’s only other female Sumatran rhino at the time. Hopes of starting an artificial rhino breeding program were dashed when scientists were unable to recover any eggs from Puntung’s ovaries.

Experts believe that no more than 100 Sumatran rhinos, and perhaps as few as 30, are left in the wild, scattered in tiny populations across Sumatra and Borneo. With such a small population to draw from, the risk of genetic defects being passed on through captive breeding are high — which makes the need for the Indonesia-Malaysia collaboration all the more important.

Malaysia has offered to send Tam, the last male rhino in Sabah, to Indonesia for attempted breeding with one of the captive females at the SRS. But the Indonesian government has not responded to the offer, according to Payne.

“We are waiting, and waiting and waiting,” he said.

Read the article on Mongabay.

The Sumatran rhino captive breeding plan is poised for a re-evaluation — and a relaunch

• The Sumatran rhino captive-breeding program caught 40 rhinos from 1984 to 1995. To date, the program has produced five calves.
• Some view these figures as evidence of a colossal failure. Others point to the births achieved as proof of the program’s eventual success.
• Momentum has been growing to relaunch efforts to capture wild rhinos. The most significant step yet was the September announcement of a new initiative dubbed the Sumatran Rhino Rescue.

This is the final article in our four-part series “The Rhino Debacle.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

There is a clip from the documentary Torgamba: the Last Rhino that I watch over and over. It shows Torgamba, the male Sumatran rhino who spent much of his life in the U.K. before being sent back to Indonesia, returning to his native country. Tom Foose and Nico van Strien are waiting for him. Neither of them are comfortable-looking TV presenters, but these are scientists, not celebrities.

Foose is as John Payne describes him: “nerdy,” with his slight build, thick glasses, short shorts and long socks. Van Strien is big-built and stiff. Both men try to look comfortable as Torgamba browses before them.  Foose calls the moment “gratifying.”

“I don’t think he’s much bigger now than he was,” van Strien says.

“No, but he was definitely a young animal — his horn was quite short and now it really is quite spectacular.”

In the film, you can see just how small Torgamba is when standing next to Foose and Van Strien. The littlest, strangest rhino.

In 2006, six years after the film was made, Tom Foose died. He was only 61. He’d lived long enough, however, to see the birth of two baby rhinos, long enough to see his life’s work bearing fruit.

Tom Foose in 2001, posing in front of the Cincinnati Zoo’s Sumatran rhino enclosure with Emi and young Andalas in the background. Photo courtesy of the International Rhino Foundation.

Re-evaluating the failure

 First, some numbers: the Sumatran rhino captive-breeding program caught 40 rhinos from 1984 to 1995. To date, the program has produced five calves. By any normal count this would look like a pretty spectacular failure.

“There weren’t as many rhinos as everybody anticipated. The rhinos weren’t as fertile as everybody anticipated. There were all those challenges,” says Terri Roth, head of Cincinnati Zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife(CREW).

But given how close the program was to accomplishing nothing but death and tragedy — given that the last calf was just born two years ago; that the remaining population in the wild may be anywhere from 30 to 80 — the captive-breeding program starts to look like a prescient gift from its founders. And maybe even the best chance to save this unique genus.

“For a combination of reasons, the collaboratively-managed global population imagined by the 1987 IUCN group was never achieved,” John Payne and K. Yoganand wrote in a 2017 report on the future of Sumatran rhino conservation commissioned by the WWF. “The most significant reasons included insufficient knowledge of key elements of rhino breeding biology, poor husbandry, unwillingness to share rhinos, more than half the rhinos unable to breed due to age-related problems or reproductive pathology and no work done to apply advanced technology.”

Though all this is true (in fairness, Roth and her team did try and artificially inseminate a female rhino), it’s a glass-half-empty view.

The half–full view: Conservationists have succeeded in five captive births, and they have etched a template of how to produce more. Rhinos are also living longer in captivity than in those early days.

“From the pioneer project, we amassed a lot of information on how to set up and consolidate such a complex operation, devise new ways of capture, handle, provide health care, translocate and breed the Sumatran rhino in controlled environments,” says Francesco Nardelli, the former executive director of the Sumatran Rhino Project. “The events at Cincinnati Zoo and SRS” — the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia’s Way Kambas National Park — “are the living proof of the success of Sumatran rhino captive breeding.”

After the successful birth of five calves (three at Cincinnati and two at the SRS), there has been a shift away from the view that the 1984-1995 breeding program was a complete disaster.

“Today I consider obsolete and almost biased the rhetoric that the Sumatran rhino captive breeding project was a failure,” Nardelli says.

Tam under general anesthesia undergoing electro-ejaculation in Malaysian Borneo. Attending to him are staff from the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA), the Singapore Zoo and Peninsular Malaysia’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks. Image courtesy of BORA.

Other take a more nuanced stance.

“It was not a rousing success, but at the same time there was a hell of a lot learned,” says Susie Ellis, head of the International Rhino Foundation (IRF). “Everything that we’re relying on now … is sitting on the shoulders of all that work. What was perceived as a failure I think is actually going to be the thing that may provide the best hope for the future of the species.”

Without the trials and errors and eventual success — without Foose, van Strien, Roth, British zoo owner John Aspinall,  Malaysian conservationist Mohammed Khan bin Momin Khan and many others — we wouldn’t know that a Sumatran rhino was an induced ovulator. We wouldn’t know that it didn’t graze on grass, like its African brethren, but that it fed on branches replete with the leaves, known as browse. We wouldn’t know that vicious fighting is part of their foreplay. We wouldn’t know that they need constant shade to prevent damage to their eyesight. We wouldn’t know how vocal the animal is — more so than any other rhino. We wouldn’t have any frozen semen samples.

This graph depicts the lifepaths of wild-captured Sumatran rhinos. The inner ring indicates the area where they were captured, while the outer ring shows their final place of captivity. Image by Willie Shubert/Mongabay.

In 1995, as the criticism peaked, the legendary conservationist Alan Rabinowitz wrote a landmark and scathing paper, “Helping a Species Go Extinct: the Sumatran Rhino in Borneo.”

In May this year, months before his death in August, Rabinowitz told Mongabay that things had definitely changed.

“I feel the same way in terms of the failure of that early program and the mistakes and short-sightedness that were part of the decisions,” he said, noting that there should have been more on-the-ground protection for rhino populations and more protected areas established. “I do not, however, feel the same way about the situation today.”

He said he had since come to believe that captive breeding was absolutely necessary. “I think captive breeding, ignoring perceived subspecies differences, and using the improved techniques that have been developed, are now definitely called for and worth the expense.”

Still, he said any captive-breeding efforts must be coupled with habitat protection and plans to re-release the rhinos one day.

“The success of captive-born Sumatran rhinos is definitely a good thing.  It does not diminish the fact that the early efforts were misguided,” Rabinowitz said.

Since the close of that program, conservationists have captured six more rhinos, four of which survive today. But these captures weren’t a part of any wider, coordinated effort to take rhinos out of the wild. Instead, they were either removing the very last rhino from an area, or incidental captures due to animals wandering into villages or oil palm plantations.

One of these rhinos, Ratu, has proven key in keeping the program going: she is the mother of the two calves born at the SRS.

“As heavily criticized as this breeding program was back in the 1980s, if we were starting now — where we started in the 1980s — we would not have time,” Roth says. “We’re not starting there. We’ve learned a lot.”

More than 30 years ago, during the 1984 meeting, Ulysses S. Seal, then chairman of the IUCN’s Captive Breeding Specialist Group, said the new rhino program would need to follow a “safe-to-fail strategy.”

This meant the ability to make “many mistakes without losing the species.” Animals would likely die, unexpected challenges would arise, and there would be, in Seal’s words, “repeated failures.” This prescience about needing an opportunity to fail looks undeniable today.

Indeed, fail, we did. A lot. But we also succeeded. Time will tell if those successes will prove enough to stave off extinction.

Epilogue: Najaq

Earlier this month, a group of conservation organizations — including National Geographic, IRF, IUCN, Global Wildlife Conservation and WWF — announced a plan endorsed by the Indonesian government to capture wild rhinos and build two additional facilities to house them. Nothing on this scale has been seen since the 1990s. The idea is to bring in wild rhinos to supplement and add much-needed genetic diversity to the current captive population. Dubbed the Sumatran Rhino Rescue, the new program is currently in the fundraising stage.

But, in many ways, this new plan actually kicked off more than two years ago — it’s a shame it started so tragically.

On March 12, 2016 a female Sumatran rhino stumbled into a pit trap, set by conservationists in central Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. She was the perfect age to begin breeding and living, breathing proof of rhinos in Kalimantan, where they had been thought extinct for decades.

Within several weeks she was dead.

In thirty years, when looking back on the Sumatran rhino conservation program, the capture of Najaq in Kalimantan may be viewed as the start of the second capture program. For more than two decades — really from 1995 onwards — the shortcomings of the 1984 program halted captures of more rhinos from the wild.

“I think part of the reluctance in terms of allowing capture was this perceived failure of the earlier program,” Ellis says.

The other part of it is that catching wild rhinos is always risky, as the cases of Najaq, and Riau in 1986 and Linbar in 1987 and Lokan in 1988 and others unnamed, attest. Things go wrong; animals perish.

Mike Griffiths, founder of the Leuser International Foundation, says the “key policy makers” are “very sensitive” to catching rhinos due to the difficulty and risk.  Of course, there are many ways to mitigate that risk.

Officially and publicly, Najaq died of a snare wound she sustained six months before her capture. However, there’s another side to the story.

Payne and Yoganand’s 2017 study cites an unpublished report on the animal’s death that points to several mistakes made in the capture and subsequent care.

Najaq was kept in her pit trap for at least 54 hours — four and half days —“subjecting her to stress and over-heating,” according to the report. Living in deep forests, Sumatran rhinos are rarely exposed to direct sunlight and spend much of their days cooling off and avoiding insects in wallows. Sitting in a pit trap for days, with constant human presence and noise, meant that Najaq was likely not only highly stressed, but potentially overheating.

“The snare wound was not the primary cause of death,” Payne and Yoganand conclude.

If this was the case, how did things go so wrong? Why hadn’t we learned from the many failures of 1984-1995?

“Too many people and institutions were involved in the capture and translocation plan, the majority with no relevant skills or knowledge,” Payne and Yoganand wrote. “There was no clear structure of leadership, decision-making and responsibility, and people with Sumatran rhino capture and translocation skills were not involved.”

Herman Stawin, senior wildlife ranger, shakes hands with veterinarian Zainal Zainuddin in front of a crate used to transport captive rhinos. The two jointly supervised the BORA team in the field. Image courtesy of BORA.

Payne, who along with his vet, Zainal Zainuddin, has successfully captured several rhinos, elucidated six key points they’ve stuck to over the years: a small team; a clearly designated leader; one vet “experienced in capture of Sumatran rhino by pit fall trap” and another person dealing with all non-rhino issues; everything ready to go the moment the rhino is trapped; the trap itself, measuring 8 by 4 by 6 feet (2.4 by 1.2 by 1.8 meters); and avoiding the use of drugs on the animals, especially psychotropic drugs.

“If you look at the case of Najaq and her death, none of these six points were followed,” Payne says.

Many agree with him. Erik Meijaard, a conservationist with decades of experience in Indonesia, wrote an op-ed blasting not only the WWF’s handling of Najaq, but its subsequent unwillingness to admit anything went wrong. Griffiths echoed criticism heard from many who work in the region when he said, “At the basic level the organizational structure and control was not sufficiently professional.”

Margaret Kinnaird, an expert in rhinos with the WWF, admits that things did go wrong.

“When Najaq was rescued she had already suffered a wound from a poacher’s snare, an unavoidable factor that contributed to her death,” she says. “Other factors including temporary holding conditions, stress and the drugs administered [that] may have complicated her situation. Arguably, there could have been better coordination among all actors during the capture effort — something that we have streamlined for any future rescues. The decisions taken during Najaq’s capture and attempted translocation were made by the highest authority in Indonesia with assessment and consultancy from a host of wildlife experts around the world. All parties involved during the effort had a role to play in the chain of events that led up to the failed attempt at ensuring she didn’t succumb to these complications.”

Still, Najaq’s death hasn’t stopped conservationists from viewing captive breeding seriously — as the newly announced Sumatran Rhino Rescue program demonstrates.

There’s been a complete turnaround. I’m stunned,” says Roth, who notes that when she started, the captive-breeding program was widely regarded as a total failure. “Now you hear exactly the opposite, that all the rhinos should be brought into captivity.”

Foose’s Vision

Over the last 30 years, the Sumatran rhino population in the wild has collapsed far more quickly than many could have guessed. In some places, populations have gone from estimates in the hundreds to near zero in a matter of a few years. Quite simply, the Sumatran rhino is vanishing.

So conservationists have returned to Tom Foose’s vision from 1984; in many ways the Sumatran Rhino Rescue is Foose’s Vision 2.0.

“I certainly think that we should get more rhinos into the breeding program, if for no other reason than we need the genetic diversity,” Roth says.

According to new numbers released by the Sumatran Rhino Rescue Program there are only around 80 wild Sumatran rhinos in the world spread over eleven subpopulations.

Nearly everyone agrees that all the rhinos should be rounded up in Kalimantan and Bukit Barisan National Park in southern Sumatra, where new numbers released by the Sumatran Rhino Rescue Program show the population at up to ten and up to five respectively. However, there is more debate about Way Kambas National Park, also in southern Sumatra, where new numbers show less than 20, and the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, where researchers estimate fewer than 50 animals spread out over six subpopulations. Some believe these areas may house enough rhinos to sustain a wild population, assuming they are protected from poachers and snares. But others think it necessary to take animals out of these populations — if only to ensure we are capturing some young, healthy, fertile females.

“If there are still rhinos in their forests, they are no longer in sufficient numbers to propagate the species scattered as they are. Those last ‘forest ghosts’ need our help to meet each other now,” Nardelli says.

Ara, a male Sumatran rhino, at Sungai Dusrun. Caught in 1994 in Peninsular Malaysia, Ara survived just over nine years in captivity. He perished in 2003 when disease struck the facility of Sungai Dusun. Ara was the last wild rhino ever caught in Peninsular Malaysia. The species is now believed to be extinct there. Image by Mohammed Khan bin Momin Khan.

But Roth, who was instrumental in making the captive breeding a success, says we shouldn’t go so far as to bring all the rhinos into sanctuaries like the SRS.

“Now, I almost find myself in the opposite part of that spectrum where people are saying, ‘We have to bring them all in and [a managed] breeding program is the only way to go,’ and I’m kind of arguing, ‘No, I don’t think so, look at the Javan rhino,’” she says. The Javan rhino today survives in a single site with a stable, albeit small, population. Roth says she doesn’t see the dilemma as a binary — all captive or all wild — but a situation that requires “multiple strategies.”

“I’m not ready to give up on the wild populations,” she adds.

Griffiths says there are plans to catch some animals for captive breeding from the eastern Leuser population. But he believes conservationists should not take animals out of the western Leuser population, which he thinks is viable in the long term.

“The population of rhinos in Western Leuser is increasing in numbers and range,” he says, noting that they have evidence of recent births. Griffiths believes that if this area can be protected it could one day be home to “several hundred rhinos.”

Rainforest in the Leuser Ecosystem. Situated in northern Sumatra, the ecosystem is home to tigers, elephants and orangutans as well as rhinos. New estimates put the number of Sumatran rhinos in Leuser at high as 50. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

What about Way Kambas? Roth says she’s not against taking animals out of Way Kambas — with a new estimate of less than 20 animals — to contribute to genetic diversity of the captive population.

But even as conservationists’ plans to capture more rhinos are coming into fruition, the question remains: Are we doing enough?

“Things don’t move fast enough. There’s no question. Again, deciding on what should be happening and then making it happen, those are two different steps,” says Roth, who calls the decision to catch rhinos “a huge step forward.”

In the meantime, she says, more can be done with the rhinos available. For example, she thinks that Tam, the last male rhino in Sabah, should be sent to Indonesia for attempted breeding.

“I know they’re concerned that Tam maybe is subfertile. I’m not sure that he is. I think he’s maybe just like all the other Sumatran rhinos,” says Roth, who notes that sperm samples taken from other Sumatran rhinos have been poor, even for proven fathers like Ipuh and Andalas.

Tom Foose, Nico van Strien and veterinarian Marcellus Adi at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in the early 2000s. Image courtesy of IRF.

“As Tom Foose used to say… [we] need to maximize our options and minimize our regrets,” Ellis says. “And I think that’s where we’re trying to go, just to be sure we’re doing everything we can.”

We’ve come a long way from the meeting kick-stared by Foose in 1984. We know more than we ever have about Sumatran rhinos. And that knowledge may, in the end, be the only thing that saves them.

“Tom was the most visionary of all of us in the 1980s,” Payne says.

Without Foose, Sumatran rhinos probably would have never made their way to Cincinnati Zoo and our whole story would be very different — and likely all the more tragic.

“He was the one who obviously encouraged us all along,” Ed Maruska, former head of Cincinnati Zoo, says of this “dedicated rhino man.”

Read the full article on Mongabay.

After 17 years, researchers finally unlock the mysteries of Sumatran rhino reproduction.

An article by Jeremy Hance published in Mongabay on 28 SEPTEMBER 2018

• As the 20th century drew to a close the Sumatran rhino captive breeding program, launched in 1984, had yet to produce a single calf.
• Home to the last two Sumatran rhinos in the United States, the Cincinnati Zoo made several key discoveries about the species’ reproductive behavior, including the fact that females only ovulate when they have contact with males.
• Andalas, the first Sumatran rhino bred in captivity in more than a century, was born in Cincinnati in 2001. This success, and the subsequent birth of four other calves, has led to a re-evaluation of the program as a whole.
• Now, attention is turned to breeding centers in the rhinos’ original habitat as the future of captive breeding efforts.

This is the third article in our four-part series “The Rhino Debacle.” Read Part One and Part Two.

As we walk out into the zoo enclosure, Cossatot comes over to greet me. Cossatot is a capybara, the size of a very big dog; his species is the world’s largest rodent. He quickly determines from smelling my hands that I’ve neglected to bring him a treat. Looking a bit put out, he goes back to lounging in his one-man kingdom. But where Cossatot reigns was once the domain of an even larger, far more endangered animal. Little does Cossatot know, but his kingdom has made history. I’m visiting the old Sumatran rhino enclosures of Cincinnati Zoo with Terri Roth, head of the zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW), and Paul Reinhart, leader of the team that cared daily for the rhinos.

Terri Roth inside one of the two enclosures at the Cincinnati Zoo that once housed Sumatran rhinos. Today the enclosures house a regal capybara named Cossatot and two emus. Image by Jeremy Hance for Mongabay.

Roth jokes that the enclosures have fallen far from their glory days when they housed arguably the rarest large terrestrial mammal on Earth.  The two enclosures — one for the male rhino, Ipuh, and the other for the female, Emi, and her calves — are now the domain of Cossatot and a pair of nervous emus. Above them are half-million-dollar metal structures that look like giant rectangular umbrellas, built to shade the rhinos’ eyes from the sun, just as the canopy does in the rainforest, and prevent severe eye damage.

“Every day we walk in here and I look at those pictures,” Reinhart says, pointing to photos of all the rhinos — Ipuh and Emi, Andalas and Suci, and, most beloved of all, Harapan — that once called Cincinnati home.

“I miss all of them,” he says.

Last Chance for the U.S.

In February of 1995, one year before Terri Roth would take the job as director of CREW, two Sumatran rhinos died within five days of each other at San Diego Zoo. This left just three Sumatran rhinos in the whole of the United States: Rapunzel, Emi and Ipuh, the sole male.

Over a decade before, in 1984, conservationists had kick-started a grand plan to capture Sumatran rhinos in the wild and breed them in facilities in Indonesia, Malaysia, the U.K. and the U.S. The bill for this large-scale undertaking was paid by the U.S. and U.K. zoos. Although conservationists were able to capture 40 rhinos over 11 years, the program had turned into a catastrophe. By 1995, nearly half of the 40 rhinos were already dead due to poor feeding practices, disease, accidents and simple ignorance. Moreover, not a single rhino had been bred in captivity. Now, there would be no more rhinos coming to the U.S. Due to a lack of success, the catching had ground to a halt, with the last rhino caught in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, in 1995.

By this time, the U.K. had only one rhino, a male named Torgamba. Peninsular Malaysia had eight, but no luck breeding. Sabah had five, but only one female. Indonesia had two in captivity, both females.

One problem the program faced was a shortage of breeding pairs. In many cases, facilities had either an unbalanced sex ratio or single, mateless animals. This diagram shows the country (center ring) and facility (outer ring) where rhinos were held. Blue represents female rhinos and red, males. Image by Willie Shubert/Mongabay.

The U.S. zoo community, down to its last three rhinos, had one final shot at doing what it promised it could back in 1984: making a baby rhino. But the U.S. rhinos were scattered: Ipuh was at Cincinnati, Rapunzel at the Bronx Zoo, and Emi at L.A. Zoo.

Roth says it was the Cincinnati Zoo director, Ed Maruska, who convinced the other zoos to send their females. “They thought, ‘Well, if anyone will do it, then Maruska will do it.’”

By August 1995, just months after San Diego lost its two rhinos, the three survivors were all brought together at Cincinnati.

“I’d become very much smitten by the beast,” Maruska remembers of seeing his first Sumatran rhino. “It was a hairy animal. It was very unusual, very primitive looking. I thought in every shape or form, Cincinnati’s going to be a part of this program.”

Maruska then made his second big move: he hired Roth in 1996.

“Ed said, ‘We have got to breed these rhinos. It’s the last chance,’” Roth remembers.

No pressure.

Cracking it

Terri Roth’s office is full of rhinos: sculptured metal rhinos, stuffed toy rhinos, plastic rhinos, wood rhinos, and cinema-sized rhino posters. She doesn’t have an unnatural obsession with rhino replicas: nearly all of these are gifts, she says. Roth, who owns a small cattle farm over the border in Kentucky, has become something of a celebrity in the small circle of rhino people, because she accomplished something that many had begun to despair would never happen.

It’s not that no one had been trying to breed the rhinos from the time they were brought into captivity — they had. But the animals would fight, sometimes viciously, whenever they were brought together. And even when mating happened, something was off: the females weren’t getting pregnant.

The first thing Roth wanted to figure out was what was going on with the reproductive cycle of the females. They trained the two females, Emi and Rapunzel, to undergo ultrasounds without anesthesia, which would have been too risky.  They quickly discovered that Rapunzel would never have children: she had a large mass in her uterus. So now the U.S. was down to an Adam-and-Eve scenario: Emi and Ipuh.

They focused all their energy on Emi.

“We were working on her, three times a week, ultrasounds, conditioning her for blood collection, monitoring her for about eight months and I still couldn’t figure out her reproductive cycle,” Roth says. “You’re beating your head against the wall.”

Basically, Emi wasn’t ovulating.

It was in the summer of 1997 that Roth made a risky, but fateful, decision. She decided to put Emi and Ipuh together, even though they didn’t know Emi’s ovulating schedule. Solitary in the wild, males and females will frequently fight like hell when brought together. Sometimes the fights result in injury to one of the animals — not something you generally want to risk with a species on the edge of extinction.

Ipuh enjoys a meal of browse next to the pool in his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. Image courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

To mitigate the risk, Roth and her team decided to do all they could to make sure Ipuh and Emi weren’t too ornery.

“We thought, ‘Let’s do it when it’s hot. Let’s do it after the male has had its breakfast.’ We put them out. Ipuh would eat his browse. He’d go into the pool, sink down and then we put Emi in.

“The keepers were all on alert. They were ready to jump in if they’re needed to. It actually worked pretty well because [Ipuh] was not really interested in picking a fight,” Roth says. “He was just in the water … Sometimes, Emi would go over to the pool and blow at him.” There were “no big skirmishes,” Roth recalls. “For the most part, they ignored each other.”

Reinhart adds that “it could have gone wrong every single day,” but they kept going.

And they did, for 42 days. Forty-two days of keepers having to put two near-one-ton, critically endangered animals into a potentially perilous situation.

“Then one day, there was just this total difference,” Roth says. “We put [Ipuh] out there and [Emi] went towards the pool and he started coming out of the pool.

“It was the most agreeable situation, shockingly. There was no chasing. There was [no] sparring, he just came out of the pool, started following her around and after a while started mounting her. We were ecstatic.”

But Ipuh was not exactly a seasoned lover.

“He tried … we even got lights out and left them together as late at night as we possibly could,” Roth says. “He mounted her and mounted her and mounted her and finally got exhausted but never was able to breed her.”

But that first encounter did lead to something historical.

“Two days after that … I did the ultrasound where I saw she ovulated for the first time,” Roth says.

A light bulb went off. It turns out the Sumatran rhino is an induced ovulator, which means the female needs something to kick-start her reproductive cycle. In the case of this species, Roth believes it’s the interaction with a male that allows a female to ovulate. Roth says they don’t even have to copulate to ovulate — they just need to spend time with a male at the right time in their cycle.

“We’ve even seen situations where the males run her around but not even [mount] her, and she’s ovulated. I think the ovulation is partly a response to the excitation of being with the male,” Roth says.

Researchers at the Cincinnati Zoo trained female rhinos to accept ultrasounds without anesthesia, allowing every stage of ovulation and pregnancy to be carefully monitored. Image courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Still, the team didn’t know how long Emi’s cycle would be, so they started up again with the daily introductions, and 21 days later Ipuh and Emi tried again.

“She conceived on that one. That was the first pregnancy, which was shocking because it’s pretty quick,” Roth says. “We saw the little fetus developing. We saw a heartbeat. We sent out the press release. A week later, the embryo was gone. We thought, ‘At least we knew he was fertile. We knew things were working.’”

Indeed, the team had the information they needed: they knew Emi needed interaction with a male in order to ovulate, they knew her cycle was around 21 days, and they knew how long the follicle would grow during the cycle. Breeding had started to go well; pregnancy, not so much.

“Then she lost the second one, then she lost the third one and it actually became more challenging for me because people started saying, ‘It’s because of the ultrasound exams that she’s losing the pregnancy,’” Roth says. “I was forced to reduce the amount of work I was doing with her, instead of increasing it. Then we were learning less.”

At this point, Roth started to run lots of blood tests to see if she could find anything amiss, comparing them with blood samples from other captive rhinos in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Then Emi lost her fourth pregnancy, and her fifth.

“Finally, I just said, ‘Let’s just put her on the progesterone supplement because we don’t think it will harm anything, and it seems like it could only help and not hurt,’” she says. Progesterone is a hormone produced in the ovaries that becomes elevated during pregnancy. This was in 2000, four years after Roth was hired.
It worked — the sixth pregnancy finally stuck. But no one had any idea how long it would last.

“The only thing I could find was somebody had at some point said it was a seven-month gestation, which we didn’t believe because no rhino is that short,” Roth says.

In fact, 16 months later, Emi gave birth to a baby boy: Andalas. He was not only the first Sumatran rhino born in captivity in 112 years, but the first tangible success of that tragedy-filled program launched in 1984.

The Cincinnati effect

Cincinnati Zoo, the second-oldest in the country, sits smack-dab in the city among the rolling hills surrounding the Ohio River. Generally considered one of the world’s top zoos, it has a long history of breakthrough captive-breeding successes, from giraffes to trumpeter swans to bison.

But perhaps none of the zoo’s past glories could compete with the birth of Andalas.

In many ways, Tom Foose, conservation coordinator for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and the driving force behind the 1984 meeting to launch the captive-breeding program, had a point about why U.S. and U.K. zoos should have a crack at breeding Sumatran rhinos: the world’s best zoos had both the expertise and the technology to have the best chance of success.

“That’s what I love about the Sumatran rhino story because it’s a perfect example of how zoos can contribute,” Roth says. And Cincinnati was even more distinct than many zoos. Not only did it have a long history of captive breeding and expertise, but it also had an entire research facility, CREW, devoted to this kind of work.

“We often have a discussion here at CREW about the disconnect between the reproductive sciences and conservation. There is so much power in that kind of technology, but it’s used so little in real conservation efforts,” Roth says.

Andalas, the first Sumatran rhino bred and born in captivity in over a century. Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

At the same time, Cincinnati Zoo, and the zoo community in general, suffered relentless criticism over the program.

“We felt it constantly. Partly because westerners, partly because zoo, probably partly because female,” Roth says.

Maruska says they took “a lot of fire” even from the wider zoo community. They were accused of taking wild animals out of their habitat just to exhibit them; they were told they’d never succeed.

“We faced the same with the California condor,” Maruska says. “We had people from the Audubon Society saying, ‘Let the birds die in dignity.’ Well, there is no dignity in extinction. Come on.”

Roth remembers that the zoo was even accused of making up pregnancies during the period when Emi was losing one after another.

“And then the negative stuff about, ‘They’re losing pregnancies, they must be doing something wrong there. Cincinnati is a bad environment,’” she says. “But we just kept at it. I just kept our eyes on the goal, and this is what we need to accomplish.”

Roth and the Cincinnati team may be the single most important reason for the eventual success. Roth was able to make astoundingly difficult decisions and then, perhaps even more importantly, stay the course when the criticism became overwhelming.

“Terri was the person that really did the job,” Maruska says.

It just took them — and everyone, in fact — much longer to produce calves than anyone could have expected at the 1984 meeting.

“Hell, I think we did a yeoman’s job with a handful of animals,” Maruska says. “I believe that if we had our full complement of animals, we’d [have] been a lot farther than we are today. I really do.”

The next step for Roth, however, was proving that Andalas wasn’t a fluke, and that Emi and Ipuh could replicate their little miracle.

In this 2017 image, Zulfi Arsan, head veterinarian at Indonesia’s Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, hand feeds US-born rhino Andalas. Photo by Jeremy Hance for Mongabay.

Fast forwarding

In 2004, Emi gave birth to her second calf, Suci. Then, in 2007, she gave birth to her third, Harapan. She successfully carried both these calves without the use of synthetic hormones.

“People thought it was really risky, but I really wanted to prove that they could do this themselves in a managed breeding program,” Roth says. Still, she believes the progesterone was vital for that first pregnancy in getting Emi over the “hump.”

“Once they’re producing, just keep them producing because everything is healthy, and everything is working right, you don’t want to stop that,” she says.

Unfortunately, Emi died in 2009 of iron storage disease, though at the time the team had no idea what was wrong. It’s an “insidious” disease, according to Roth, that can only be diagnosed after death.

In 2013, the zoo decided to euthanize Ipuh. Suffering from cancer, Ipuh had stopped eating and was barely able to walk.

Detail of Ipuh, whose taxidermed remains are currently housed at the University of Cincinnati. Photo by Jeremy Hance for Mongabay.

“It’s hard to describe when they were born, it’s even harder to describe when an animal passes away,” says Reinhart, who spent 22 years caring for Ipuh. “[He] contributed so much to the species and the knowledge and the propagation of these animals and he stayed with us to the very end.” Today, his preserved body rests at the University of Cincinnati.

An even bigger heartbreak came a little over a year later when Suci, Emi and Ipuh’s daughter, died from iron storage disease, the same sickness that took her mother.

“With Suci, we suspected it when she started showing the same symptoms that Emi did,” Roth says. For a while, Suci, just 9 years old, improved with aggressive treatment, but a few months later her health worsened. “Her liver was just too damaged,” Roth says.

She believes iron storage disease was an issue at Cincinnati because the rainforest rhinos have evolved to live with multitudes of parasites and biting insects that constantly drain them of blood.

“They’re trying to absorb as much iron as they can from what little iron they get on their diets because they have this constant load of parasites. They’re bleeding, and they’re having to build up tissues that parasites have chewed down, so they need it all the time,” she says. “We bring them into our zoos or our facilities and we get rid of all the parasites, and they don’t have that outlet anymore, so they’re not losing iron anymore.”

By the time of Suci’s death, the Sumatran rhino program had shifted significantly. During the period when Cincinnati Zoo was struggling to produce just one calf, many experts began to feel the best thing for the species would be to bring them into managed sanctuaries in their local environment. This way, the rhinos would have direct access to their wild, natural foods and, many experts believed, this might help induce mating and decrease the chance of disease.

Harapan, born at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio, now lives at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park in Lampung, Indonesia. Photo by Rahmadi Rahmad/Mongabay-Indonesia.

In 1998, Indonesia opened the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS) deep in Way Kambas National Park, a park also home to some of the last wild Sumatran rhinos on Earth. Two females were brought from zoos in Indonesia that year, as was Torgamba, all the way from the U.K. Unfortunately, breeding between these pairs was never successful.

Still, by the late 1990s, the SRS and the Sungai Dusun rhino center in Malaysia — where six rhinos would die in 2003 — were beginning to be seen as the future of the program.

In 2007, the U.S. sent Andalas, the first calf born in captivity, thousands of miles to the SRS in the hope that he could find an unrelated mate. It was time for the Cincinnati staff to transfer what they learned overseas.

“We really work hard here, that whatever we develop here it’s not about ‘mine, mine, mine,’” Roth says. “That’s why I was just so pleased that they were able to do it in Indonesia.”

Andalas mated successfully with Ratu, a wild rhino found roaming near a village in 2005 and brought to the SRS for her safety. Their union produced Andatu, a male, in 2012, and Delilah, a female, in 2016.

“It is a really good template; the hardest thing is to get people to follow it,” Roth says of the subsequent breeding successes. One of the most challenging bits is simply allowing the animals to spar, which Roth believes is a natural part of their breeding process.

“You have to have confidence that you knew what you’re looking at,” she says. “And to hold your ground and say, ‘No, keep them together, keep them together, keep them together,’ because after an hour or two, they’re going to settle down and they’ll breed.”

Cincinnati then made one of its toughest decisions yet: to send Harapan, its last rhino, and the public’s favorite, to Indonesia.

“Many of us really wished we could just get more rhinos. We wished we could have gotten a female from Indonesia and bred her with Harapan, and kept the program going. That was hard,” Roth says. But it was clear that the best thing for the species was to let Harapan go.

In 2015, Harapan, took the same journey from Cincinnati to Sumatra as his elder brother, in the hope that he, too, would breed successfully with one of the females at the SRS. Harapan was the last rhino in Cincinnati — and the last Sumatran rhino in the U.S.

Zookeepers load the crate in which Harapan will travel from Ohio to Indonesia. Image courtesy of the Cincinnati Zoo.

“We miss him here,” Reinhart says. “He’s in a better place, but he was our last born and we really loved him here. I do miss him still.”

Harapan’s arrival in Sumatra marked not only the last Sumatran rhino leaving the Western Hemisphere, but also 20 years since the close of the original captive-breeding program. The 1984 program was still a long way away from achieving a sustainable population in captivity that could, if nothing else, ensure the species wouldn’t go the way of the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly rhino. However, conservationists had ensured that by 2015 there was still a chance to do so.

Read the full article on Mongabay.

A rhino “caught” on video was subsequently caught in real life, having walked out of the forest into an oil palm plantation, from which it refused to return to the forest. This rhino, a mature male named Kretam, or Tam for short, was enticed into a crate and moved into a small paddock in Tabin Wildlife Reserve on 13 August 2008.

His tameness indicated that this rhino was experiencing a problem. Specifically, it was decided to capture Tam because he had a visible injury to the right front leg, which turned out to be from a snare trap. This injury was treated successfully after capture.

On the advice of veterinarians who work at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas, Sumatra, Indonesia, a 2.5 hectare extension to the paddock was built, encompassing forest and a small seasonal stream. The cost of building the new paddock was borne jointly by Sabah Forestry Department, WWF and Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment. This site is now the “transit area” for Tam and for additional rhinos that may be caught in the future.