Researchers Celebrate First Live Encounter With Sumatran Rhino in Borneo for 40+ Years
Jamie Woolley, Greenpeace International | April 2, 2016
Researchers announced the first live encounter with a Sumatran rhino in Borneo for more than 40 years. But the human pressures that have pushed this species to the brink of extinction are still very much in play.
A rhino in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia (2008). Photo credit: Willem v Strien / Greenpeace
An excited World Wildlife Fund (WWF) team released details of how the female rhino was safely captured in East Kalimantan (part of Indonesian Borneo) last month and has now been transported to a more protected region. Over the last few years, evidence from camera traps and footprints has indicated that these rhinos still survived in Borneo’s forests, but this is the first known encounter with a live animal since the early 1970s.
The rather inaccurately-named Sumatran rhino was once found across large swathes of southern and south-east Asia, but in modern times has survived only in Malaysia and Indonesia. Just last year, it was declared extinct in the wild in Malaysia and now Indonesia is the rhino’s last refuge.
The discovery of one more rhino is fantastic, but in reality this news does little to secure the future of the species as a whole. These rhinos are still perilously close to extinction, surviving in tiny, scattered populations which are exquisitely vulnerable to any kind of threat, of which there are many.
Deforestation, like this place in North Barito, Central Kalimantan threatens species like orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos. Photo credit: Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace
An orangutan on the banks of the Rungan river in Central Kalimantan province. Fires raged in a critical orangutan habitat in October 2015, including here on the edges of the Nyaru Menteng orangutan sanctuary. Photo credit: Ardiles Rante / Greenpeace
in full: http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/02/sumatran-rhino-borneo/
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