Daily Express 27 Nov 2019 KOTA KINABALU: Former WWF Sabah Director Datuk John Payne (pic) said there were many missed opportunities  to save the Sumatran rhino.  Sabah’s last known Sumatran rhino, Iman, died last Saturday and questions were raised as to how the beast that managed to survive for millions of years in Sabah’s primeval forests was allowed to become extinct.“In 1980 IUCN experts discouraged Sabah from capture of rhino because it was considered too risky,” Payne said.

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“They advised that only ‘doomed Sumatran rhinos, that is, the old, sick and isolated rhinos  be captured for globally managed population breeding programme,” he said, adding that a proposal by the late Tom Foose of American Association of Zoos and Aquariums to initiate advanced reproductive technology for the species was also ignored. The idea was to send a Sabah rhino to America for captive breeding – everything thing was signed and agreed under the Berjaya Government but hue and cry followed a change of government (PBS) and the whole so-called Borneo Project was scuttled. With Sabah rebuffing the idea, Foose approached Indonesia and arrangements with Cincinnati Zoo under Dr Terry managed to sire two male rhino plus a third in Indonesia itself.   

“In 2000, a warning by Nan Schaffer that over 70pc of female Sumatran rhinos have reproductive pathology was again ignored  and later dubbed by the International Rhino Foundation as a Malaysian problem,” Payne said. Then in March 2012, a letter of intent for collaboration signed in the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry but was ignored until this day. “Between 2013 and 2019, repeated offer from Malaysia including sending Tam and eggs from Iman and Puntung were met with no response from Indonesia,” he said. He said in 2005, female Rosa, captured in Sumatra and never bred now has lelomyoma like Iman but there were no attempts to harvest her eggs or try IVF or artificial insemination. It is a pity that only hesitant and basic attempts at any aspect of advanced reproductive technology had occurred. “Again in November 2018, female Pahu was captured in East Kalimantan but until now there is no action to make use of her genome  towards saving the species ,” Payne said.  

Read the Daily Express article here  

This Letter to the Editor appears in Pachyderm: Journal of the African Elephant, African Rhino and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups (Issue 60): June 2018-June 2019.

Dear Chair/Editor, This letter represents the views of Borneo Rhino Alliance, a not-for-profit company dedicated to taking all necessary steps to prevent the extinction of the genus Dicerorhinus, and does not necessarily reflect the views of any other party. The authors have about one hundred years of experience in detection, surveys, capture, translocation and husbandry of Sumatran rhinos, between them. Furthermore we invite urgent debate on this issue for the purpose of securing the Sumatran rhino.

The most ancient surviving rhinoceros genus is Dicerorhinus, represented by a species commonly known as the Sumatran rhinoceros. A glance through the sparse literature on Sumatran rhino from the 1930s to 1970s clearly shows that the species was by that time in deep trouble: very few animals, widely scattered in separate forest blocks in four or five nations, generally with fewer than ten or so individuals in any one place. A prior millennium or more of hunting to supply horns for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was the main reason for this accelerating decline. Clearly, the problem to be addressed by the 1980s was not of excessive mortality, which had already happened, but of the Allee effect: very low Sumatran rhino population density everywhere, very few rhinos, and not enough breeding to reverse the trajectory towards extinction.

The answer should have been obvious: launch a single programme of captive breeding in managed, fenced facilities to increase population density of fertile adults, boost birth rate and address the inevitable inbreeding depression developing in each isolated cluster. Similar concepts had worked for the white rhino in South Africa, for both species of bison and for the musk-ox, many decades earlier. But what should have been obvious was not to be. Only a few people wrote about the situation clearly, notably Tom Foose, Conservation Coordinator of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums from 1981 to 1990.

1981 marked not only the beginning of Foose’s prescient tenure, but also the beginning of the era of ”sustainable development”, when erosion of the profession of wildlife management began, in favour of justifying wildlife conservation in terms of human benefit and, paradoxically, a more emotional approach to wildlife. Surely, in 2019, we cannot continue to believe that small pockets of forest in protected areas, typically marginal for large mammals in terms of soil fertility, steep terrain and access to limiting resources, will be adequate to sustain tiny, unmanaged wild large mammal populations in the long term in the absence of specific human interventions? The late twentieth century also marked the beginning of the stakeholder consultation approach to wildlife management, which may work in some circumstances but can also lead to indecision or ineffective compromise. Most importantly now, the Sumatran rhino may be doomed by lack of leadership, and the accompanying need to make hard decisions, as well as the continuing failure to understand that the paramount need is to boost birth numbers.

To one of us (JP), having surveyed Sabah, the northern tenth of the island of Borneo for Sumatran rhinos from 1979 to 1983, as a WWF-Malaysia staff member in collaboration with Sabah Forestry Department, it was very clear that the species would soon be extinct. Foose visited Sabah in 1983, and the government at that time was warm to collaboration within the context of an international capture and meta-population management programme. It was our hope in 1984 that a single programme to boost Sumatran rhino births, prioritising capture of wild rhinos for ex situ management, would be realised.

The fate of Dicerorhinus was sealed on 4 October 1984, however, when a compromise was reached among 20 of the world’s designated Sumatran rhino experts. At an IUCN-brokered meeting in Singapore on Sumatran rhino at which John Payne was participating, Robert Scott, the then executive director of the Species Survival Commission and meeting facilitator valiantly and diplomatically did his best to reach a strong conclusion. Unfortunately, among the 20 persons present, there was a body of opinion, led vociferously by Professor Rudolf Schenkel, that all Sumatran rhinos should stay put in the wild.

The compromise reached was that where rhinos were in protected areas, or anywhere showing signs of breeding, they should be left alone, and only “doomed” rhinos would be captured for ex situ breeding purposes. The fatal flaw in this compromise became apparent in 2000, when Nan Schaffer of SOS Rhino pointed out that at least 70% of the 23 females captured between 1984 and 1994 (11 in Sumatra, 10 in Malaya and two in Borneo) suffered from reproductive tract pathologies at or soon after the time of capture, a feature that prevented or hindered pregnancy. The subsequent scattering of captured rhinos between facilities in five barely-collaborating regions added to the inevitable failure of this programme.

It is essential to understand that this first captive breeding programme failed because of a fatal constraint in the criteria for capture (namely selection of old, infertile and sub-fertile breeding stock), coupled with multiple weaknesses in execution, and not because the original concept was wrong.

The imperative to persist with a managed meta-population approach was dealt a major blow by the late Alan Rabinowitz in his 1995 essay Helping a species go extinct: the Sumatran rhino in Borneo. Despite having participated with the authors in a survey for rhinos in Danum Valley, Sabah, in September 1992, and concluding that only four to seven rhinos remained at that time, Rabinowitz persisted in the view that leaving the rhinos in situ was the best way forward.

By 2011, all except four of the forty Sumatran rhinos captured in the 1984-1994 IUCN-brokered programme were dead and only the young, compatible pair of Sumatran rhinos in Cincinnati Zoo had fulfilled Tom Foose’s dream. In 2011, two things were initiated in Sabah. Backed by Sabah government policy and funded by Sime Darby Foundation, Professor Thomas Hildebrandt and a team from Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, commenced in earnest, a programme to focus on use of

advanced reproductive technology to make Sumatran rhino embryos. This was initiated because it was clear that there would never be enough fertile Sumatran rhinos in captivity to be able to rely on natural breeding to save the genus. In 2011, too, the government of Sabah initiated contact with the Ministry of Forestry, Indonesia to collaborate on a programme for Sumatran rhino breeding.

On 15 March 2012, a Letter of Intent for Collaboration on Ensuring the Survival of the Sumatran Rhinoceros was signed in the office of the Director-General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (Indonesia), by the Indonesian and Sabah authorities, the IUCN/SSC Asian Rhino Specialist Group and others. The objectives were: to “collaborate .. and endeavour to acquire additional fertile rhinos of both sexes from the wild for our managed breeding programme .. and share biological materials (including sperm and embryos) .. and share information, in particular concerning husbandry and reproduction ..”. This worthy intent still needs to materialise.

In November 2012, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam visited key people in Indonesia with the intention to drum up support for the intended Indonesia-Malaysia collaboration on the species. For several years, however, Indonesia seems reluctant to talk with Sabah directly, thinking incorrectly that the national government of Malaysia has policy-making authority over Sumatran rhinos in Sabah.

In April 2013, a three-day Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit was held, initiated by Borneo Rhino Alliance, taken up by IUCN, and hosted by Wildlife Reserves of Singapore. Perhaps inevitably, there was much divergence in the views of the 100 people present, and the summit ended with expensive plans to “conduct more surveys” instead of the necessary immediate initiation of capture of fertile Sumatran rhinos for breeding. In October 2013, the first Asian Rhino Range States meeting was held in Indonesia involving Governments of Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal, under purview of IUCN, with the five Asian rhino range states committing to managing all the Asian rhino species to achieve at least 3% annual population growth rate through implementation of the actions outlined in the meeting’s Declaration. In February 2019, the second Asian Rhino Range Countries Meeting was held in India. Malaysia’s request to insert into the final Declaration the possibility to “pursue the application of advanced reproductive technology to make best use of infertile and sub–fertile Sumatran rhinos” was rejected in favour of rather bland wording that allows conservative elements involved in the species to do nothing new.

On 24 August 2014, Indonesia proposed that Sabah provide its sole male rhino, Tam, to Indonesia. The request was agreed to within 10 days, but then Indonesia backed down, seemingly shocked that Sabah had
responded so positively. The problem of Indonesia requiring engagement with the national government of Malaysia seemed to have been solved on 4 June 2015, when the National Biodiversity Council of Malaysia endorsed a proposal from Sabah. The proposal was to use advanced reproductive technology to help prevent the extinction of the Sumatran rhino, and that Malaysia should invite Indonesia to collaborate on Sumatran rhino conservation work. Since then, a consistently supportive national Ministry in Malaysia, right up to today, has done its best to attract interest in collaboration to save the genus. But all approaches from Malaysia have been stalled by Indonesia, both at governmental and NGO levels. An increasingly outdated Memorandum of Understanding, initiated in 2012, has yet to be finalised and signed at the time of writing this paper.

Collaboration does not necessarily have to be on the application of reproductive technology but can be on topics as diverse as sharing experience on safe capture, translocation by helicopter from remote areas, husbandry, treatment of reproductive tract pathologies, anaesthesia and so on.

Of the last four Sumatran rhinos captured in Sabah (female Gelogob in 1994, male Tam in 2008, female Puntung in 2011 and female Iman in 2014) two females and the male have died, leaving only Iman alive today. Puntung was euthanized in 2017 due to the pain she was suffering from squamous cell carcinoma. Tam died on 27 May 2019 of the effects of end stage renal failure. Both deaths drew widespread sympathy and comment both on social media and on supposedly reliable news feeds. The sympathy is touching to those close to the rhinos, but all the reporting from outside Malaysia demonstrates well the shifting baseline syndrome. There is a universal lack of understanding that the species’ current situation is the end stage of thousands of years of history and that extinction will be prevented only by decisive human intervention. Most of these recent authors continue to refer to poaching and habitat loss, unaware that it is not simply the overall small rhino numbers that has been the threat to the species for the past century, but instead the very thin scattering of individuals on the ground and the accompanying tendency for female reproductive pathologies.

Potentially good news is that the living genomes of all four of the last Malaysia–born Sumatran rhinos are sustained in cell cultures. At some time in the future, when the technology and politics are right, gametes can be made from these cell lines. But surrogate mothers will be needed for emplacement of the embryos. This is where Indonesia’s role is critical, but there has been no real commitment from government, and specialist rhino NGOs alike on the dire need to secure and manage the last few wild fertile females as the primary means to maximise rhino births.

Throughout the year 2018 up to now, BORA has waited for the signal from Indonesia to arrange from the Malaysia side the sending of oocytes from Iman for in vitro embryo production attempts using sperm from Andalas (the proven fertile bull rhino at Way Kambas). This procedure can be performed by Indonesian specialists in the Bogor Agricultural Institute in Indonesia. The Government of Indonesia seems to be under the false impression that, because Iman is periodically sick with her leiomyoma tumours, she has stopped producing eggs. Among the impediments that have been applied are the need to ensure that the provisions of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing are fulfilled and the non-issuance of a CITES import permit.

A strong and pervasive spirit of patriotism pervades all elements of Sumatran rhino work. It is difficult to know what a Malaysia-based NGO can usefully say at this juncture to dispel this insidious threat to action on Sumatran rhino. Millions of dollars have gone into Indonesia in recent years, with the only obvious result being two female Sumatran rhinos captured, one dead, the other unsuitable for reproduction. Apart from generous but small donations from individuals, almost all funding of Sumatran rhino work in Malaysia over the past decade has come from Malaysian sources. A Malaysian team and a German team respectively have
offered to harvest sperm and oocytes from Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia (both having done this successfully in Sabah); but approval has not been forthcoming.

Those in Sabah are disappointed that the Sumatran rhino rescue programme launched in September 2018 by National Geographic together with IUCN, WWF, International Rhino Foundation and Global Wildlife Conservation, focuses exclusively on the Indonesian populations, rather than the Sumatran rhino as a genus.

If the government of Indonesia, for whatever reason, does not want collaboration with citizens of Malaysia or Germany, we urge the authorities and their donors to implement the necessary urgent and over-due measures within Indonesia. In other words, forget about Malaysia and do what needs to be done independently.

At some time in the very near future a point will be reached when the sheer technical and logistical inability to capture and translocate the last rhinos from remote sites, coupled with the reproductive condition of all those remaining rhinos still able to mate, and bureaucracy amongst the indecisive decision-makers, will together conspire to condemn the 20 million year old genus Dicerorhinus to inevitable extinction. The precise week on which that will happen will, of course, forever remain unknown. Perhaps it has already occurred, but we must either assume not, or stop all further wastage of funds on the genus.

BORA entreats the conservation body that what is needed now (and what has been needed since the 1970s) is: (1) high level leadership, which has to come from within Indonesia, (2) one meta–population programme, (3) one team of competent and dedicated people, led by a capable implementation leader, (4) capture of as many Sumatran rhinos possible, while there is still time to do so, immediately, and consistently prioritising capture of fertile (not old or infertile) individuals, (5) minimise the birthing interval of all captive females that are not reproductively compromised, (6) ensure that every remaining Sumatran rhino, including the reproductively compromised individuals,—contributes its gametes towards making embryos through the application of assisted reproductive technology.

And, equally important, it is important to dispense with time and money wasting distractions that are not needed, including (1) “surveys”, (2) superfluous staff with no experience and overly-specific tasks, (3) excessive camera trapping, which cannot tell a rhino’s reproductive status and is not necessary to decide where to place traps, (4) “awareness” and (5) “stakeholder consultation”. These needs are not impossible to achieve. But they are impossible within the current scenario. The alarm bells are ringing, we should all be awake and move forward.

John Payne (JP)*, Abdul Hamid Ahmad and Zainal Zahari Zainuddin Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA)

*corresponding author: [email protected]

The Star online by Stephanie Lee, 30 September 2019

Prof Hildebrandt and his team from the Leibniz Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin performing the delicate procedure to harvest egg cells from Iman, Malaysia’s last surviving Sumatran Rhino

KOTA KINABALU: A single egg cell – that is all that scientists managed to harvest from Malaysia’s last living female Sumatran rhino – Iman. The egg cell (oocyte) was harvested at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Lahad Datu on Monday (Sept 30).

Scientists hope to fertilise the oocyte using the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) method with frozen sperm, which was extracted from Tam, the male rhino that died in May this year of renal failure.

The single oocyte has been sent to the Reproductive Innovation Centre for Wildlife and Livestock at the Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Sandakan.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said this is great news and it would have been even better if they had managed to harvest more oocytes.

“But this will allow us to continue with the programme to try to create embryos of this critically-endangered species,” he said.

“We remain ready to collaborate with Indonesia for further attempts,” he added.

The extraction was performed by Prof Thomas Hildebrandt and his team from Leibniz Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, in collaboration with the local Borneo Rhino Alliance team.

Preparation and maturation of the oocyte is being handled by Prof Arief Boediono of the Bogor Agriculture University, Indonesia.

Professor Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Dean of the Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture from UMS, said the Reproductive Innovation Centre is now open for use and he is pleased that the IVF attempt will be made there.

“There are not enough wild Sumatran rhinos left alive to save the species,” he said.

Advanced reproductive technology can ensure that the living genomes of rhinos are kept alive long after their deaths.

Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/09/30/scientists-harvest-single-egg-cell-from-iman–malaysia039s-last-sumatran-rhino#WiemEY7G8EXRGrvQ.99

By Avila Geraldine, NST Online May 27, 2019

KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia’s last remaining male Sumatran rhinoceros, affectionately called Tam, has died today.

Tam died at about noon at Borneo Rhino Sanctuary in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Lahad Datu.

Sabah Deputy Chief Minister cum Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Christina Liew said the exact cause of death would be known after the autopsy.

“Invariably, everything that could have possibly been done, was done, and executed with great love and dedication.

“(Tam’s) last weeks involved the most intense palliative care as humanly possible, rendered by the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA) team under veterinarian Dr Zainal Zahari Zainuddin at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary,” she said in a statement, here.

Liew said Tam’s death was related to old age and involved multiple organ failures.

It was reported that Tam’s appetite and alertness had declined significantly since the end of last month.

Urine analysis tests indicated that Tam was suffering from organ damage and poor kidney function.

It spent most of its time lying down, having received round-the-clock attention and medication from keepers as well as veterinarians.

In Aug 2010, a wildlife team captured the male rhinoceros at the Kretam oil palm plantation in Tawau.

At the time of its capture, the rhinocerous was thought to be in its mid-20s. Tam was taken to the Tabin Wildlife Reserve where it had lived ever since.

Liew said Tam’s living genome was now preserved in cell culture.

“We hope that with emerging technologies at cell and molecular levels, he may be able to contribute his genes to ensure the survival of the species,” she added.

With Tam’s death, Malaysia is now left with one female Sumatran rhinoceros, Iman. She was captured in 2014.

In 2017, another female rhinoceros Puntung was euthanised because she was suffering from a painful and incurable cancer.

Iman appears to be the last Sumatran rhinoceros that was found in the wild. Since her rescue, no other Sumatran rhinoceros has been detected in Sabah, indicating that the species may have become extinct.

IZW experts Professor Thomas Hildebrandt and Dr Robert Hermes extract eggs from Iman, assisted here by BORA staff Hassan Sani.

The 4 July 2018 announcement by Professor Thomas Hildebrandt of Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and his co-workers that embryos of white rhinos have been successfully made in vitro represents one of the most exciting breakthroughs in years for rhino conservation. We at BORA, the Borneo Rhino Alliance, are ecstatic at this development, as it represents a new dawn for not just white rhinos, but also for another, even more endangered species – the Sumatran rhino.  While there are only two females of the northern white rhino subspecies left, the white rhino species stands at close to 20,000 individuals. But there are fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the world. Even this may be an optimistic estimate with some reports claiming only 30 are left in the wild.

Unlike the African and Indian rhino species, Sumatran rhino numbers have drastically plummeted not primarily by poaching. Instead, since the 1930s, the four-part threat was, and still is –

1) Not enough Sumatran rhinos in any one place to form a breeding population 2) Few or no mates in any one location, so very little to no mating 3) Inbreeding due to isolation over several generations

4) Reproductive tract pathology and infertility due to the above three syndromes

As a result, for many decades, there have not been enough Sumatran rhino births to sustain the species, whether or not poaching can be prevented. Natural breeding was seen as the solitary key solution but in the past five years, there has only been one birth in captivity, while there have been three deaths. In the absence of concerted efforts to maximize all available avenues of increasing the number of Sumatran rhino births, the oldest and smallest of all rhino species has been on a one-way fast track to extinction.

File image of Puntung, a female rhino rescued by BORA vet Dr Zainal Zainuddin. Photo by C C Azrie Alliamat

There is only one clear way now to save the species – all the last remaining Sumatran rhinos have to be brought into a single managed breeding programme, where two complementary approaches are taken: allowing the fertile ones to breed naturally, and supporting the infertile ones to allow their limited eggs and sperm to create embryos in vitro.

BORA has been desperately working for the past decade to try to breed new generations of Sumatran rhinos. But we faced incredible obstacles in the form of not enough rhinos left in Malaysia and the rhinos’ reproductive tract pathology and infertility. With the help of Professor Hildebrandt (IZW, Germany), Professor Cesare Galli (AVANTEA, Italy) and Professor Arief Boediono (IPB, Indonesia) and their colleagues, we have tried to create a Sumatran rhino embryo in vitro. It was a process that had been derided by many of our counterparts as being fantasy and foolish thinking.

But now with this success for the white rhino, the issue for the Sumatran rhino is no longer about “can in vitro fertilization be done?” but “why are we not prioritizing such work for Sumatran rhinos?”.

Only a few tens of Sumatran rhinos remain alive in Indonesia, and only two, a female and a male in Malaysia. Professor Hildebrandt and his co-workers have been aiming for in vitro production of Sumatran rhino embryos since 2011, when there were three females and the male alive in well-managed facilities in the Malaysian State of Sabah and five managed in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia. But the advanced reproductive technology group has never managed to gain interest from some of the most prominent institutions that need to collaborate or provide support to generate a single recovery programme.

The government of Malaysia, Sime Darby Foundation, and numerous interested individual donors from around the world have provided critical financial support for attempts to apply advanced reproductive technology to Sumatran rhinos, but the shocking lack of interest outside Malaysia has stymied the much-needed species recovery programme. The amount of funding going to advanced reproductive technology on Sumatran rhinos simply has been not sufficient enough to allow the scientific process to catch up to the sort of work done on the northern white rhino. The funds from international donors, which currently include a generous donation from government of USA, have gone to camera trapping, surveys, anti-poaching patrols and meetings in Indonesia and USA. This approach fails to recognize that the greatest threat doesn’t come from outside the Sumatran rhino population. It comes from within. Too few Sumatran rhinos, that are scattered and not breeding. All these efforts are akin to putting a band aid over a tumor.

For years, we’ve been trying to engage and work with prominent institutions that are able to influence or lead the charge to save the Sumatran rhino but we’ve been forced to refrain from taking them to task.

But today, we make our stand. The science of advanced reproductive technology is now beginning to deliver, and all of us must embrace it as we do everything in our power to save the most endangered of rhino species by increasing the number of births. We call on the Government of Indonesia, the International Rhino Foundation and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to recognize the incredible and critical opportunity we have in front of us. Create a programme that prioritises Sumatran rhino births, through both natural breeding of fertile rhinos and in vitro fertilization for those that need such help. The alternative is to choose certain extinction.

Dr John Payne,

Executive Director of Borneo Rhino Alliance

View featured gallery highlighting IVF efforts to save the Sumatran rhino