New Straits Times 10 Feb 11;
TUARAN: Time is fast running out for the Sumatran rhinoceros, but a wildlife official believes something can still be done to save this species.
Sabah Wildlife Department director Dr Laurentius Ambu said a genetic resource bank to preserve semen, egg cells, ovarian tissue and embryos would help them carry out a breeding programme in captivity.
He said natural or assisted breeding in the captive population and artificial insemination remained the only two options left to save the animal from extinction.
Since the department is pursuing the natural breeding method, it was desperate to capture them in the wild.
"We need to get a few more wild rhinos to boost the genetic diversity and our chances for successful natural breeding in captive population.
"We need to set up a cyro-preservation bank to store these valuable tissues," he said when met at the two-day Sumatran Rhino Global Management and Propagation meeting which ended yesterday.
Ambu said they had been trying to capture the wild female rhinos and since April, the department has been targeting a specific young female rhino in the wild in the hope of boosting its breeding programme.
However, capturing them was hard with only two wild rhinos captured over the past six years in Sumatra and Sabah.
Between 1984 and 1995, only 40 Sumatran rhinos were captured for a global propagation programme but only four remained now.
He said only the Cincinnati Zoo in the United States had been successful in breeding the rhinos in captive conditions, three times between 2001 and 2007.
"It is clear that we need to do some new things (to save the Sumatran rhinos from extinction) because desperate times require desperate measures.
"One good piece of news is that the species is a stubborn lot.
"There are still Sumatran rhinos in the same protected areas which used to be strongholds in 1995. This include Danum Valley and Tabin in Sabah."
However, he cautioned that even with the best efforts by experts, prospects for the continued existence of the Sumatran rhino remained bleak.
"In the wild, populations appear to continue to decline, or at best, remain stagnant despite our best efforts at protecting the habitats as well as the rhinos," Ambu said.
