Rare Sumatran rhino sighting in Malaysia

Yahoo News 2 Dec 07;

A Sumatran rhinoceros has been photographed in peninsular Malaysia in the first sighting for more than a decade, raising hopes the animal can avoid extinction, a report said Sunday.

The New Straits Times said the image, captured by a camera trap, snapped just a small part of the rhino but experts declared the wrinkly and folded thigh was unmistakable.

Rhino footprints were last found in southern Johor state in 2001 but it was only in 1994, when a stray animal wandered out of a forest in northern Perak, that the animal was last sighted in the wild, according to the newspaper.

The report did not reveal where the rhino was snapped, but said the photo was taken in a wildlife corridor targeted by the Wildlife and National Parks Department which also spotted elephants, sun bears and the bison-like gaur.

"We're going back to areas where the rhinos were once recorded, looking for more signs and taking samples," said Siti Hawa Yatim, head of the department's biodiversity conservation division.

"We're also looking for doomed animals -- individuals alone in a vast area which cannot survive without companions."

World Wildlife Fund Malaysia announced earlier this year that it had captured video footage of the extremely rare Borneo sub-species of the critically-endangered Sumatran rhino.

The footage, taken in a forest in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island, showed a rhino eating, peering through jungle foliage and sniffing the automatic video camera equipment used to shoot it.

The Sumatran rhinoceros is one of the world's most endangered species with only small numbers left on Indonesia's Sumatra island, Sabah and peninsular Malaysia, according to the WWF.

The Bornean sub-species is the rarest of all rhinos, distinguished from other Sumatran rhinos by its relatively small size, small teeth and distinctive shaped head.

WWF says scientists estimate there are only between 25 and 50 of the Bornean sub-species left.

Rare sighting of the Sumatran rhinoceros
Elizabeth John, New Straits Times 2 Dec 07;

KUALA LUMPUR: The skin's coarse, folded and wrinkled but this flash of thigh has some hearts in the wildlife fraternity racing. It belongs to the elusive and critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros.

Although just a fleeting glimpse of skin, it is the first ever camera trap image of the animal in Peninsular Malaysia.

Rhino footprints were last found in Johor in 2001 but the animal was never spotted.

One stray rhino was captured in 1994 when it wandered out of a forest in Perak but elsewhere, the animal has not been sighted in the wild here since the mid 1990s.

Rhinos were long thought to be on the path to extinction in the peninsula, but the slightly hazy snapshot retrieved from camera traps on the main range has raised hope that there are still some in the wild.

The Wildlife and National Parks Department's eight cameras, camouflaged and strapped to trees, also shot dozens of other animals passing through a 10-square metre clearing.

It turned out to be a wildlife highway of sorts as the cameras snapped pictures of elephants, sun bears, tapir and even the rarely photographed gaur.

But it was the picture of grey-brown folds that stood out among the hundreds of others taken.

It was later compared to old close-up shots of rhinos previously held in captivity and verified by the department's veterinarians as that of the rhino.

The department was first led to the area when an inventory team surveying the main range discovered fresh footprints, a wallow and bones of a long-dead rhino, explained Siti Hawa Yatim who is head of the the department's Biodiversity Conservation Division.

In August, officers set up the cameras that were left in the area for one to three months.

The results showed just how rich the area was with wildlife.

Apart from the small area covered by the cameras, the department surveyed a forested area almost six times the size of Singapore.

This resulted in the recording of 852 animal signs of 17 mammal species.

The most frequently recorded were elephants, wild boar and white-handed gibbons.

Right now, several surveys are being carried out in protected areas in Perak, Pahang, Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah.

"We're going back to areas where the rhinos were once recorded, looking for more signs and taking samples.

"We are also looking for doomed animals -- individuals alone in a vast area which cannot survive without companions."

As a result of the photo, the department is sending more people to the area and setting up extra camera traps.

The idea, according to Siti Hawa, is to establish the numbers and to decide, what steps, if any, should be taken to protect them.

"There is concern for their safety as there is logging being carried out near the area the photograph was taken."

Next year, the department will mobilise all the Rhino Protection Units which it set up in 1995 and will be buying and setting up more camera traps.

"We're hoping that there'll be more finds."

The department has also recently acquired the technique of extracting DNA from dung samples.

Once survey teams return with samples of rhino dung, they will be able to conduct the tests and compare them to rhino DNA in international databases for a final confirmation.

Siti Hawa said the department had made this a priority project.