The Sumatran rhino — one of the most critically endangered mammals on the planet — may have just received a lifeline.
A new scientific publication from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of Massachusetts — Amherst (UMass) applies an enhanced population survey technique to identify, for the first time, priority forest patches for intensive rhino protection of the remaining populations of Sumatran Rhino — one of the most endangered large mammals on the planet. Assessing population and spatial distribution of this very rare species is challenging because of their elusiveness and very low population number. The results of the rhino population survey will appear in the current issue of the open-access journal PLOS ONE and provides vital data to support a final attempt to prevent the extinction of the Sumatran rhino.
The Sumatran rhino once ranged from north-east India to Indonesian Borneo and may have numbered in the tens of thousands only 200 years ago. However, the unyielding demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine has reduced this species to perhaps less than 100 wild individuals, with no viable populations occurring outside of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is Critically Endangered according the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™.
The study provides urgently needed information on where the remaining rhinos are distributed. Using rhino sign data collected in 3 presumed strongholds covering more than 3 million ha, a spatially-explicit habitat model was developed. The model predicted that rhinos now only occupy 237,100 ha in the Leuser landscape, 63,400 ha in Way Kambas National Park and 82,000 ha in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park.
In total, they occupy only 13 percent of the surveyed area. However, the study identified five “Intensive Protection Zones” that are of unrivalled importance in saving Sumatran rhinos.
The paper’s authors recommend four vital actions achievable with strong political will:
1. Formally establishing the five Intensive Protection Zones identified in this study, and ensuring zero poaching is achieved by significantly scaling-up law enforcement efforts
2. Ensuring the viability of the Intensive Protection Zones by preventing several planned new roads from bisecting them in the Bukit Barisan Selatan and Leuser landscapes
3. Consolidating the small and scattered rhino population in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and the outside core population of Leuser landscape identified by this study. Recognizing that this will require strong political will and major financial support
4. Recognizing that Sumatran Rhino is likely to go extinct if no actions are taken, as happened with the last Javan Rhino in Vietnam in 2010
The Director of Biodiversity Conservation of the Indonesian Ministry of Environmental and Forestry and chairman of Joint Rhino Conservation Secretariat of Indonesia, Bambang Dahono Adji, commented, “We welcome these important new results in supporting Indonesia’s ongoing endeavours to fully implement its Sumatran Rhinoceros Action Plan.”
Sumatran rhino calf born at Way Kambas National Park rhino sanctuary
In 2012 a healthy male Sumatran rhino calf was born in the rhino sanctuary Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra. The newborn was the offspring of a wild female Sumatran rhino and a male that was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in the U.S in 2001. The male was flown to his ancestral home, Sumatra, in 2007 in hopes that he would breed with one of the rhino sanctuary’s three females. The new baby was only the fourth Sumatran rhino born in captivity in the past century, and the first one to be born in Indonesia.
(Source: International Rhino Foundation and Mongabay)
Joe Walston, WCS’s Vice President for Global Programs urged, “For the first time we have a clear idea of where the priority rhino’s sites are, we have the tools and techniques to protect them, and now must ensure a concerted effort by all agencies to bring the Sumatran rhino back from the brink of extinction.”
(Source: WCS news release, 16.09.2015; Umass Amherst news release, 16.09.2015)