Goodbye to all that

Also known as the hairy rhino, the singing rhino or the Asian two-horned rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis is the world’s smallest rhinoceros and believed to be the most closely related to the extinct wooly rhino that first emerged some 10,000 years ago.  

Listen to The Singing Rhino

Iman’s passing closes the chapter on attempts by local wildlife authorities to conserve the species that began as early as the 1960s: the Selangor government gazetted the Sungai Dusun Wildlife Reserve back in 1964 primarily to protect Sumatran rhinos, and as late as 2010, there were six rhinos living there. Now the animals can only be found in a few places in Indonesia and number roughly between 50 and 80 individuals.

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It is a sad end to a species whose evolution spanned 50 million years and that once roamed as far as Bhutan and India, possibly even up to Sichuan in China.

Iman’s death also means that the Sumatran rhino is extinct – in the wild and in captivity, anywhere and everywhere – in Malaysia. We have irrevocably lost a part of our wildlife heritage, leaving a DNA vacuum in our ecosystem that can never be filled.

It is also a grave indictment of our efforts to protect and conserve wildlife, as this is not the first time that Malaysia has lost a species, it's just the most recent to disappear.  

Malaysia has also lost, notably, the Javan rhino, hunted to extinction in the 1930s; the green peafowl, extinct in the wild since the 1960s; and the leatherback turtle, which no longer nests on our shores.

This list is far from conclusive but when it comes to the Sumatran rhinos, could Malaysia have done more?

Attempts were made by local authorities. Even as Iman’s life was being eaten away by the cancer, scientists managed to harvest a single egg from her, which they tried fertilising with Kretam’s sperm. However, the attempt failed, as the sperm is believed to have been of poor quality.

Read: Scientists harvest single egg cell from Iman – Malaysia's last Sumatran rhino

The Sabah government also tried to work out an agreement with Indonesia to supply eggs but nothing came of it. And ovaries harvested from Puntung, which was put down in 2017, did not contain any eggs. So, basically, there are no means of keeping alive the genetic line of Sumatran rhinos from Malaysia.

Read: No egg cells in harvested ovaries

According to a 2017 paper by international rhino expert Dr Terri Roth and her team, a genomic analysis of the species’ demographic history showed that Sumatran rhino numbers were significantly reduced by the end of the Pleistocene era some 11,700 years ago.

This means that the species has been on the brink of extinction for thousands of years.

“The species has not been abundant on this earth for a very long time but it is a survivor – at least, it has been until now,” writes Dr Roth in an e-mail reply to queries from The Star. 

Dr Roth’s work in the United States at the Cincinnati Zoo’s Centre for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife has produced a Sumatran rhino calf.

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Besides the issue of fragmented forest and habitat loss from booming human population, Malaysia, adds Dr Roth in her email, has not provided the level of protection needed to keep poachers from entering the jungles and killing the rhinos. 

Rhino horns are poached for traditional Chinese medicine, where it is used to treat ailments ranging from fever to “devil possession”, or increasingly, as ornamental carving and status symbols. 

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“This weakness is not unique to Malaysia," says Dr Roth.  

“The same is occurring in numerous countries all over the world and is largely the result of increased demand for natural resources by the growing human population and greed,” she says. 

Breeding Sumatran rhinos in a managed sanctuary, admits Dr Roth, will always be difficult although the science behind doing this successfully is now known. 

“The species is socially complex and their behaviour difficult to understand,” she points out, adding that breeding this species will continue to be a challenge. 

“I believe, and always have, that we should be working on a two-pronged approach that includes both managed breeding and the most rigid protection of still viable populations.

“Both are needed to save the Sumatran rhino,” she says.

Regardless, Dr Roth remains hopeful for the species’ survival: a breeding sanctuary in Sumatra, Indonesia, was recently expanded to hold more rhinos, and the country has undertaken a plan to enhance the protection of its wild populations while capturing some fertile animals to supplement the breeding programme. 

“Although the outlook for the Sumatran rhinos does appear bleak, we should remember that the Javan rhino population has been below 100 individuals for several decades but the Indonesian government, with the support of a few NGOs, has succeeded in maintaining a viable population despite the low numbers,” she said.

“I hope I live to see the day when Sumatran rhinos are re-introduced into healthy, protected forests in Malaysia and elsewhere," says Dr Roth.

Until then, should this ever come to pass, it is hard not to take the loss of the Sumatran rhino personally. This is because the extinction of the species – which has evolved and survived for over 50 million years – isn’t just about an animal. It is, ultimately, about all of us.