Emi, Cincinnati Zoo's famous female Sumatran rhino, and the mother of three calves, has died aged 21. Just about the most serious setback possible to the captive breeding programme.
This is terrible. Let us hope Cincinnati can quickly get another female so the captive breeding program is not delayed any longer than necessary.
Harapan was moved to the White Oak Conservation Centre several months ago. Emi's death is a real surprise. I thought the male Ipuh would die first as he is much older than Emi. Now they have the(old) father and(young) daughter left at Cincinnati and I wonder where they will go from here.
Not ideal suggestion coming up, but could show whether there is much point in continuing the program is to breed Ipuh and Suci, if Suci has that first calf then I feel there is real merit in capturing 1.1 individuals from the wild. A male for Suci and a female for Harapan at White Oak.
I was able to meet Emi in July and was captivated. I'm sure all of the keepers are devastated. This is terribly sad for all concerned.
I would suggest that with less than 300 individuals remaining in four or five widely disjunct populations, taking more animals from the wild would be grossly irresponsible considering the overall near-total failure of the captive breeding program. Sadly for those of us (including me) who tend to be interventionist when it comes to conservation... the best chance for the Sumatran rhino is in-situ conservation. Between elephants, orangutans, tigers, rhinos, siamangs and sun bears, there is no shortage of critically endangered charismatic megafauna in Sumatra. It'd be nice to know just how well the respective conservation efforts are integrated.
And conservations have paid the price, I can't remember what it was exactly called but I saw on nat geo once that there was a project over a number of years to capture sumatran rhinos in the wild, they had a quite number of them, but due to the lack of knowledge of their diet, every single one unfortunately died. I'm unsure but it might of been sungai dusun.
No, you have your facts a bit muddled here. Some of the captured rhinos went to America and its true that most of these later died due to dietary problems- but not all of them e.g. Emi at los Angeles, Ipuh at Cincinatti(though he was very close at one point) and Rapunzel at New York. The rhinos that went to the Sungai Dusun 'Breeding' Centre did not suffer dietary problems- they were all lost due to other causes. There have been big advances in the husbandry of the Sumatran rhino since that time, both at Cincinatti where they have bred three, and Way Kambas in Sumatra, where they haven't bred any so far. I believe the only way forward for the captive programme is the addition of one or two wildcaught animals, particularly if the USA rhinos are to have any more chance of breeding in future.
RIP, lets hope another zoo gets them in the future and get more blood into the gene pool, can i ask, can the rhinos still breed without Emi?
Sorry but what are you asking here? As long as there is a female and a male , we should be alright and as the captive population stands at 4.3 (I think) we still have some hope.
I was absolutely devastated when I heard this news earlier in the week having travelled many times from the UK to see Emi in both Los Angeles and Cincinnati. My sincere condolences to all her keepers in Cincinnati (especially Paul Reinhart) and the CREW team led by Dr Terri Roth. Looking to the future, could artificial insemination prove to be an option for furthering the captive breeding programme once Suci is mature? I am aware that Sumatran rhinos are induced ovulators but ovulation can be stimulated with drug therapy and I am sure that semen must be available from Torgamba (now at Way Kambas but previously at Port Lympne) and other unrelated males (who unfortunately have since died). If any zoo could make this happen then Cincinnati is the place (as they were recently successful with AI in one of their Indian rhinos although I appreciate that Indians and Sumatrans are very different). I fully realise that this probably hasn't been tried previously but maybe now is the time to consider such an approach. Good luck to all concerned with furthering the breeding programme for this critically endangered animal - I wish you every success.
This is a terrible blow to the Sumatran rhino program. Man does it come at a bad time for me too. I was just about to release a podcast in a week or so on the Sumatran Rhino that heavily featured Emi. Now I have to do a major rewrite.
