Photo credits: WWF-Malaysia/Lee Shan KeeWWF-Malaysia's Rhino Patrol and Monitoring Unit is taking on a match-making role after rescuing a wandering rhino in August. Will this lone male be the key to Sumatran rhino survival in Borneo?
Ask the Rhino Team in the Heart of Borneo what is the latest and they will tell you that they're busy shoooting cupid's arrow in the wild. The recently rescued Sumatran Rhino believed to be long isolated from his kind needs to find a partner soon if he is to survive. The WWF-Malaysia Rhino Team vows to do just that.
Spotted in early August 2008, Tam is an adult male, roughly 20 years of age, which was seen taking up residence in an oil palm plantation about 3 km away from the nearest forest. A plantation worker was the first to see him, a slightly aggressive but weak large mammal, suffering from an infected wrist caused by a snare trap.
WWF-Malaysia, which was contacted, immediately dispatched a rescue group together with the Sabah Wildlife Department and SOS Rhino Borneo. Now, Tam is safe and is given periodical health checks at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve.
"We are very pleased that the plantation company did the right thing by calling us, and not take matters into their own hands. Rhinos are aggressive animals and it is important not to provoke them especially when they are weak. We are glad to see the community members are already aware that this is critically endangered animal" said Raymond Alfred, WWF-Malaysia Borneo Species Programme Project Manager.
A 2005 Sumatran Rhino survey conducted in Heart of Borneo revealed that there are less than 25 rhinos left in Sabah. A very delicate population considering that there were more than 50 just half a decade ago. It is believed that poaching was the main cause of the massive decline of this species.
Wildlife poachers in Borneo are still at large, salivating over rhino horns for sale in the exotic market for medicinal and cultural reasons. A kilogram of rhino horn can fetch up to USD45,000 in the Far Eastern countries and China. Yemen was the world's largest market for poacher-supplied rhino horns in 1970s where horns were considered to be status symbols. The Republic acted on the ban of the import in the 1980s.
MATCHMATKING THE WILD
WWF-Malaysia has been working on monitoring Sumatran rhinos in the Heart of Borneo since 2000 under the Asian Rhinoceros Elephant Action Strategy Programme. In 2006, Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd and WWF-Malaysia initiated the five-year "Rhino Rescue" project to help protect Sumatran rhinos. The corporation pledged a contribution of RM5 million over the 5 years. Camera and video-traps were set up in various locations to track this elusive animal. WWF-Malaysia believes that the rescued Tam is the very same rhino that we have been tracking for the last 18 months.
"We have checked our records for the footprint size, compared the pictures and watched the footage over and over again. Based on the markings on his horn and ear as well as the leg wound, we are 99% sure that this is the same rhino" said WWF-MAlaysia Borneo Senior Technical Advisor Dr Junaidi Payne, referring to the ground-breaking camera-trap footage of the rhino in the wild obtained by WWF-Malaysia in 2007.
Until his injury is healed, Tam remains under the observation of veterinary officers from Sabah Wildlife Department. Like humans, he needs to look and feel his best before he pursues a mate.
But how do isolated rhinos meet and mate in fragmented forests?
The answer is usually not by walking into a plantation. A consensus from the International Rhino Workshop held in Sabah in 2007 includes a complex process of translocating "doomed" rhinos to a potentially practical population. There are so few of these animals left that they are very difficult to find. But for Tam to walk into the plantation might just make the moving process a little easier. The good news is WWF-Malaysia has also been tracking two other rhinos in the Heart of Borneo: a mother and a calf. Provided that the environment, diet health and relationship are suitable, the rhino might just get lucky.
Green Heart (Issue 4)
http://wwf.org.my
No comments:
Post a Comment