![]() ![]() John Aspinall, an eccentric zoo owner from the U.K. So, he got a bee in his bonnet, right?”Īn ocean away, someone else appears to have been harassed by the same bee. And the reason was that there were too few and they weren’t breeding. ![]() He realized somehow … that the Sumatran rhino was going to go extinct. He’s unfit, short-sighted, addicted to Coca-Cola, not a field person at all,” said John Payne, at the time a project manager for WWF-Malaysia and a representative of the Sabah Forestry Department. Now he just needed to convince a group of rhino experts and conservationists, brought together by the Asian Rhino Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), that this was the best way forward. He’d already laid the groundwork with Sabah, one of Malaysia’s Bornean states, for a proposal to catch several Sumatran rhino pairs and split them between local facilities and several U.S. ![]() Now, conservationists are mulling a new capture program to add new rhinos to the small pool of captive rhinos in a last-ditch effort to ensure the species survives the Anthropocene.Ī 39-year-old Tom Foose, conservation coordinator for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), arrived in Singapore in October 1984 with a bold new plan to save the Sumatran rhino from extinction. We have an additional nine rhinos in captivity, but only two of those have been proven to breed: a female named Ratu, and Andalas - yes, that first son of Ipuh and Emi, his wild-born bride. Officially, experts say around 100 animals survive in the wild, but unofficially the number could be as low as 30. Today, the Sumatran rhino is arguably the rarest large terrestrial mammal on the planet. Four more calves have been born since.īut it’s a program with which conservationists are still struggling to reconcile: was it a poor strategy that ended in total failure, or has it given us a second chance to save the species? The meeting launched a global captive-breeding program for the species - a program that would meet with tragic failure and much folly until, finally, the first taste of success in Andalas. The calf, a male named Andalas, was born in 2001, the direct and long-awaited result of a historic meeting 17 years earlier in Singapore. His taxidermed remains now reside at the University of Cincinnati. Born in the wilds of Sumatra, Ipuh is to-date the most prolific male breeder of his species in captivity. But he probably should be: Ipuh is the first Sumatran rhino bull to sire a calf in captivity in 112 years. So I try not to take him too seriously as he rests between the vending machines and lounges for students. But I’ve been fortunate to have met enough Sumatran rhinos in my life to know they are actually gentle, joyful, singing creatures. His expression could be called somber, even grim. In life - well, really in death - he resembles a purple-hued, thick-skinned antediluvian hog: his horns have been shaved off his thick, reddish fringe hair is nowhere to be seen. A one-ton, taxidermed behemoth, a prehistoric relic who only passed away in 2013. But as you enter Zimmer Hall at the University of Cincinnati , deep in the heart of the Midwestern United States, there he is: Ipuh. It’s hardly the most likely place to meet a Sumatran rhino. As conservationists mull a new plan to capture more rhinos, what lessons do past efforts offer?. ![]()
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