Endangered Animals: The Sumatran Rhino

The Sumatran Rhino is a two horned relative of the African Rhino who averages only 3.9-4.8ft in height and 500-800 kg in weight, making it the smallest of the rhinoceros family. A redish-brown coat covering the rhino's body gives it its nick name, "the hairy rhino". The species was first discovered in 1793 on Sumatra's west coast and numerous large populations were later found in rainforests, swamps and cloud forests of other Asian countries including India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. This gentle creature is neither known to fight for territory or to compete for food and habitat. With no known predators (other than humans) the Sumatran Rhino even shares its trails with Elephants, Wild Dogs, Deer and Wild Boars. While this rhino is socially docile, it is mainly a solitary animal; coupling only for mating and child rearing. Its main diet consisting of saplings, leaves, fruit, twigs and shoots, combined with the rhino’s love of mud baths keeps the creature in constant search of sustainable living conditions. However with the loss of habitat that south eastern Asia suffers due to agriculture, lumbering and human population growth the rhino continues to lose more and more of what it used to call home. Sadly, poaching is the greater of two evils here. Most of the population decline is attributed to poaching as the animal’s horns are sought after for traditional Chinese medicine and carry a value of $30,000 US/kg on the black market. Today less than 300 Sumatran Rhinos remain. They are so rare that one can spend weeks if not months to locate an individual in its remaining habitats in Sumatra and Borneo. In the early 1980's some conservation groups began a captive breeding program, transporting 40 rhinos from their natural habitats to zoos and reserves across the world. While hopes were initially high, the project was overall deemed a disaster, even by the initiating members of the conservation groups. By the late 1990's not a single rhino was born in captivity. Furthermore, 20 of the 40 captured rhino's had since died in the confines of a zoo. However in 2001, one lone calf was born in the Cincinnati zoo, the first calf born in captivity in 112 years. Many continue to believe there is hope for the dwindling species and refuse to allow it to disappear all together without the continued effort from mankind to undo one of its many wrongs.