Rare
Sumatran Rhino Returns to Indonesia to
Save Species
After traveling more than sixty hours, a U.S.-born
Sumatran rhino arrived at Indonesia’s Way Kambas
National Park in Lampung province on Sumatra island
where it will hopefully breed with two young female
rhinos and help ensure the survival of the species.
Andalas, the first Sumatran rhinoceros born in
captivity in more than a century, was welcomed at
Jakarta international airport by an enthusiastic
crowd of high-ranking Indonesian officials,
including Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban,
conservationists, and reporters. An overnight ferry
ride to the park followed, in a convoy with
officials, conservationists, and the accompanying
veterinarian.
Before Andalas could even board the plane for the
long flight to Indonesia, he had to be certified
healthy. He also received fourteen types of
vaccination, as he had been born in a sterile
environment. In addition, the 700-kilogram rhino
required a period of adaptation at the Los Angeles
zoo where the temperature is hotter climate.
Sumatran rhinos are more suited to living in
locations with temperatures of 27-30 degrees
Celsius.
On
the trip from Jakarta to the ferry port at the
northwestern end of Java in a Safari Park truck,
Andalas was assigned additional medical staff from
Indonesia, and a team of doctors ensured that he had
food and was sprayed with water and disinfectant.
Forestry police supplied an escort, as the convoy
could not travel faster than sixty kilometers an
hour. Finally, after a ferry crossing and another
truck ride, Andalas arrived at the Way Kambas Park
and was released into a quarantine pen covered with
wire netting as protection against mosquitoes. Over
the next weeks, Andalas was surprised intensively.
Nobody was allowed to touch him without first going
through a sterilization process.
Life in U.S. zoos had not prepared Andalas for the
Sumatran forest and the parasite-carrying ticks
infesting them. Once set loose in the Sumatran Rhino
Sanctuary, which currently occupies 100 hectares of
native forest, andalas would be facing the biggest
challenge to his successful relocation: a variety of
tick borne blood parasites for which he has no
primary immune defenses. While native rhinos develop
immunity to these parasites from an early his
journey.
Marcellus Adi, site manager at the Sumatran Rhino
Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park, said Andalas
seemed to be healthy after the trip, although he had
looked nervous upon arrival. If he was confused, it
was understandable since he had to stay in his
traveling cage for so long.
Veterinarian Robin Radcliffe, who accompanied
Andalas on the journey from Los Angeles, confirmed
that he was doing fine. He was only a bit tired
after the long trip. Andalas would be in quarantine
for the first sixty days, according to Radcliffe, to
help him adapt to his new environment. After that,
he would be released into a 10-hectare rainforest
area. Radcliffe leads the Rhino Conservation Medical
Program, which is based at Cornell University and
affiliated with the International Rhino Foundation.
Andalas (an old name for the island of Sumatra) is
the first Sumatran rhino ever to be transported from
the USA to Indonesia as part of an international
breeding program. He will join two young female
rhinos there, named Rosa and Ratu.
Andalas was born at the Cincinnati Zoo on September
13, 2001, to Emi and Ipuh who had been sent to the
USA by the Indonesian government as part of a
Sumatran Rhino Trust agreement developed in the
mid-1980s with four U.S. zoos (Cincinnati, Bronx,
LA, and San Diego). Andalas’s birth marked the first
time that a calf had been born at a zoo since 1889
when a live birth was recorded at the Calcutta Zoo
in India. He was moved to the LA zoo in 2004 when he
dam, Emi, produced a second calf, Suci, Emi is now
expecting her third calf; Andalas came after a
number of unsuccessful pregnancies.
Of
the many rhinos captured for the captive breeding
program, only six were sent to the USA; the others
remained on Java. Emi was the seventh and last to
go. She arrived at the Los Angeles zoo in good
condition and began her new life on the West coast.
It was quite a transition, straight from the forests
of Sumatra to the bustling city of LA, but Emi
handed it all in stride. Her adaptability is one of
the traits that maker her so exceptional.
The sexual desires of Emi’s maturing offspring,
meanwhile, needed an outlet. Coincidentally, the Way
Kambas National Park was facing a crisis of fertile
male rhinos. There is a male rhinos there, named
Togamba, but he has been unable to impregnate his
female rhino to conceive is not an easy task, but
the authorities at Way Kambas believe that Andalas
is the solution to their lack of baby rhinos. The
quality of his sperm has not yet been tested, but he
has had an his sexual organs have no anatomic
abnormalities. A single male Sumatran rhino can
impregnate two to three females in a season.
Currently, there are four Sumatran rhinos in the
Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary. Torgamba, the male, came
from the Port Lympne zoo in the United Kingdom,
Bina, the female, from Taman Safari Indonesia in the
mountains outside Jakarta. In the sanctuary since
January 1998, the two have re-adapted well to their
native environment after many years in captivity. In
the latter part of 2005, two more rhinos, rescued
from precarious situations, were brought into the
sanctuary. These were the young females, Rosa and
Ratu that it is hoped Andalas will impregnate. Rosa
came from the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park
where she had wandered into a nearby village. Ratu
was rescued when she, too, wandered into a village
near the southern boundary of Way Kambas National
Park.
The Sumatran rhinos (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis),
which can weigh an estimated 600-950 kilograms,
are the smallest and heaviest of the species. They
have a reddish-brown coat covered sparsely with long
hair. Considered the most endangered of all rhino
species and one of the most-endangered mammal on
earth, The Sumatran rhino population has diminished
by 70% over the last two decades. The primary cause
is pouching, due to the demand for its horn that is
believed to contain medicinal properties by Some
Asian cultures. Today, a population of less than 300
rhinos is thought to exist in isolated pockets of
Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Los Angeles and Cincinnati zoos are working
closely with the international Rhino Foundation to
protect this species in its home range. The
continuing loss of animals in the wild makes the
success of the captive breeding program that much
more important. The success story of the Cincinnati
zoo’s Sumatran rhino breeding program exemplifies
the importance species conservation efforts.
Los Angeles zoo director John Lewis described
Andala’s journey to Indonesia as vital to the future
of Sumatran rhinos. The breeding program,
established as a collaborative effort among the
Indonesians, Malaysians, and Americans, is just one
example of the extent to which zoos will go in order
to save a species from extinction.
Conservation groups say saving the Sumatran rhino
from extinction is possible noting that sustained
efforts in India and Africa have led to booming
numbers of species in those countries. Breeding
programs like the one that is bringing Andalas back
to Sumatra and greater political will to stop
poaching and forest encroachments are essential if
numbers are to recover.
