World's rarest rhinos make first video trap appearance - then toss camera

WWF website 28 May 08;

JAKARTA--After just a month in operation, specially designed video cameras installed to capture wildlife footage in the jungles of South East Asia have twice recorded remarkable images of a mother and child pair of the world's rarest rhino.

But the success was not without incident as after a short inspection, the rhino mother charged the camera installation in Ujung Kulon National Park and sent it flying.

"With fewer than 60 Javan rhinos left in the wild, we believe this footage was well worth the risk to our equipment," said Adhi Rachmat Hariyadi, who leads WWF-Indonesia's project in Ujung Kulon National Park.

“It’s very unusual to catch a glimpse of the Javan rhinos deep inside the rain forest. The motion triggered infrared video traps are a useful way to observe them and the ways they use their habitat in a more detailed way."

Recordings of the Javan rhino are the highlight so far of the installation over recent months of improved video-based wildlife recording equipment, which in its pioneering phase in Malaysia has already provided footages of rare Malayan tigers in the wild and a Sumatran Rhino in Borneo.

“Setting cameras such as these is always a challenge, especially with animals as rare and elusive as the Javan rhino,” said WWF Malaysia photographer Stephen Hogg, who designed the video-traps. “The assault on the camera still has us baffled because we specifically use Infra Red (IR) lights as the source of illumination when we designed and built these units so as to not scare animals away when the camera activates.”

The use of video traps over camera traps is yielding valuable insights into the behaviour of target and other species which will aid in their conservation.

In the case of Javan rhinos, the new video traps replace wooden bamboo platforms nearly 10 metres off the ground at wallowing sites, which were difficult and time-consuming to construct, required safety training and precautions for users and offered limited viewing angles. From a scientific viewpoint, adverse angles and larger distances meant it was often impossible to identify particular rhinos.

By contrast, the video traps are readily relocated, generally safe to operate and surprisingly robust. “The camera tossed in our footage was relocated by a survey team and put back on its stand next day and hasn’t suffered molestation by a rhino since,” said Adhi Rachmat, WWF team leader in Ujung Kulon.

"We are proposing a test translocation of a few Javan rhinos in the near future to establish a new population in a new area. This requires hard data and reliable science and settting up video traps allows us to do that without stop sending researchers to spend the night on rickety bamboo platforms trying to observe these highly endangered rhinos," said Adhi. "Since the video traps don’t have any moving parts and are very silent, they can be placed much closer than humans along the favourite haunts of the Javan rhinos, like salt licks, trails and mud wallows."

Javan rhinos are found only in two locations in the world with Ujung Kulong NP in Java, Indonesia estimated to have around 60 rhinos -- more than 90 percent of the global population.

To prevent the rhino population from going extinct from a sudden catastrophe like a diseases or other natural disasters, the Government of Indonesia recently launched rhino conservation strategy titled “Project Rhino Century (Proyek Abad Badak) in partnership with WWF, International Rhino Foundation (IRF), Yayasan Badak Indonesia (YABI), dan US Fish and Wildlife Service to create additional Javan rhino populations by translocating a few individuals from Ujung Kulon to another suitable site.

The video trap instalment was done and monitored by a survey team consisting of biologists, including Ujung Kulon park rangers, WWF, and local people.

Watch the video on the WWF website.

Cameras catch glimpse of world's rarest rhino: WWF
Aubrey Belford Yahoo News 29 May 08;

Hidden cameras in the jungles of Indonesia's Java island have captured rare footage of the world's most threatened rhino, boosting efforts to save it from extinction, conservationists said Thursday.

Two camera traps set up in the remote Ujung Kulon national park yielded new footage of the endangered Javan rhinoceros, said Adhi Hariyadi, leader of the project by the environmental group WWF.

The footage will help conservationists fighting to save the species, which numbers only around 60 in the wild, by giving new information on the rhinos' health as well as vital insights into their breeding habits, said Hariyadi.

"We have already been able to observe a mother and calf walking and rearing and in the process of separation," he told AFP.

The motion-triggered, infra-red cameras caught night-time footage of one female rhino and her calf in the lush forest of Ujung Kulon.

Seeing the unfamiliar device hanging against a tree, the mother charges the camera with a full-force headbutt and the picture disappears.

In spite of the blow from the rhino mother's head, the green camera box was retrieved and set up to capture more footage the next day, Hariyadi said.

The footage will be key in efforts to save the endangered species, Hariyadi said. The roughly 50 Javan rhinos living in Ujung Kulon make up the only viable population capable of reproducing.

Despite the rhino knocking the camera to the ground, the footage of mother and calf beforehand will be useful for understanding how the Javan rhinos care for their young, and how and when they force their children to fend for themselves, he said.

"(The footage) basically fills in the puzzle, and since we are challenged to increase the population of Javan rhinos in the future it basically helps us to identify suitable environments for them," he said.

"We know very little about their behaviour unfortunately."

Conservationists and the Indonesian government are studying the possibility of relocating some of Ujung Kulon's rhinos to a new home on either Java or Sumatra island to avert catastrophe if the community collapses.

"If something happens to this population they will be all gone," said WWF spokeswoman Desmarita Murni.

"Knowing how they live we can find a way to protect them to prevent them from going extinct from disease or competition from other animals for food," she said.

The new footage is the first to be taken of the Javan rhino from camera traps and the first from any source in the last five years, Hariyadi said.

The Javan rhino, which is distinguished by its small size, single horn and loose skin folds, is likely the most endangered large mammal on the planet, according to WWF.

Roughly 90 percent of the world's Javan rhinos live in Java's Ujung Kulon park, an oasis of wilderness on the western edge of one of the world's most densely populated islands.

The Javan rhino is classified as critically endangered by the environmental group and none of the animals currently live in captivity.

World's rarest rhino caught wrecking video camera
Yahoo News 30 May 08;

The world's rarest rhino does not like the limelight. A Javan Rhino was captured on video attacking a camera set up in an Indonesian jungle to study the habits of the animal, apparently because she sensed the lens was a threat to her calf, the WWF said Thursday.

There are around 70 Javan Rhinos in the wild, about 60 of which live in Ujung Kulon National Park on the western tip of Java island. The remainder live in Vietnam.

In the first month of operation, five infrared video traps have captured two images of the camera-shy mother and calf, said Adhi Rachmat Hariyadi, head of the Ujung Kulon project for the environmental group.

"It is very unusual to catch a glimpse of the Javan Rhino deep inside the rain forest," he said, adding the camera was undamaged and put back on its stand the day after the incident.

WWF officials say they plan to relocate several of the rhinos in the park to another part of Indonesia in the hope that they breed. Otherwise, they fear the species could be wiped out in the event of disease or natural disaster.

Rhino numbers in Indonesia over the past 50 years have been decimated by rampant poaching for horns used in traditional Chinese medicines and destruction of forests by farmers, illegal loggers and palm oil plantation companies.

Apart from the 60 Javan Rhinos, there are thought to be around 300 Sumatran rhinos still alive in isolated pockets in the forests of Malaysia and Sumatra island.

Rhino rarely seen by humans is photographed
Thomas Bell, The Telegraph 29 May 08;

A camera trap in the Indonesian jungle has recorded two rhinoceros from a species so rare that it is almost never observed by humans.

A motion sensitive infra-red camera recorded the mother and calf of the Javan rhinoceros species at Ujung Kulon national park on Java.

When the mother saw the camera she charged the unfamiliar object, breaking it.

Adhi Hariyadi is from the conservation group WWF, who is running the project.

He said: "We have already been able to observe a mother and calf walking and rearing and in the process of separation."

The information could help preserve the species, which was once widespread in Asia.

"We know very little about their behavior unfortunately," Mr Hariyadi said.

The Javan rhinoceros exists only in a population of around 50 animals at Ujung Kulon and another 10 in Vietnam.

It has been brought to the brink of extinction by poaching and habitat loss, including due to defoliants used in the Vietnam war.

"If something happens to this population they will be all gone," said Desmarita Murni, a WWF spokeswoman.

"Knowing how they live we can find a way to protect them to prevent them from going extinct from disease or competition from other animals for food."

The species has always fared badly in captivity and no zoo has held a specimen for over a century.