Sumatran rhino move. » Los Angeles Zoo

15-04-2007

Bronx's old female was called RApunzel- I think she was deposited by Cincinnati as they wanted the space and she was too old.

I know Emi was 'owned' by Los Angeles but not sure about the male 'Ipuh' I think he went direct from Asia to Cincinnati?. Not that sure the USA zoos where they were sent to owned them anyway.

16-04-2007

Male Ipuh is on loan from the indonesian gouvernment to Cincy Zoo. He was flown to LA and stayed a couple of months at San Diego Zoo before being transported to Cincy Zoo.

more info:

..:: Welcome To The Cincinnati Zoo ::..

16-04-2007

It says he stayed 6 months(April-October) at San Diego 'until Cincinnati's exhibit was ready'. I guess he was destined for Cincinnati and San Diego was only a temporary stopover. Emi on the other hand was sent Los Angeles first, Cincinnati later. I guess Indneasian Govt owns them all, even the Cincinnati born ones?

16-04-2007

San Diego is an Awful place for Rhinos. The wild animal park is Soo much better in that respect.

16-04-2007

a did u know fact- adelaide zoo had one of the only jarvan rhinos ever in captivity, it is proudly displayed at the adelaide museum.

it lived its life as a indian rhino, but after its death over 80 years ago, was discovered to be javan!!!!

there is also a stuffed baby javan at melbournes museum

16-04-2007

thats right - there is a stuffed javan calf at the museum..

grant - i totally agree that it would be really benificial to secure another population of javan rhinos eleswhere. and your right. the vietnamese population is a perfect start, since without aid it is destined to die out anyway.

my biggest concern is that cat loc is. not a particuarly safe place. not for the rhino or anyone who wants to study them. landmines and i assume UXO
still litter parts of the park. i suspect landmines alone would be one of the major factors that have caused the extinction of the larger mammals like javan rhino and mayan tapir in places like veitnam and cambodia.

so if the plan is to introduce highly valuable captured rhino from java, in a bid to kick-start a second population, then i would be pretty reluctant to risk introducing them into the wilds of cat loc. though always risky, i would agree, as you said grant, that the species probably adapts reasonably well to captivity and a safer option might be to try that, instead removing ALL vietnamese rhino from the wild.

so my suggestion? a captive facility ("rhino sanctuary") is built within cat loc to aclimatise the animals captured within the park. the population is assessed and if need be, after care in captivity is assured, the potential of bringing in an additional animal from java can be explored.

of course this would be no easy task - but in my mind the most ideal and safest bet...

keeping in mind the javan rhino is likely to be a seperate, larger subspecies to the vietnamese animals - but hey, beggars can't be choosers can they?

16-04-2007

What about keeping Javans in Far North QLD?

Ha Ha

16-04-2007

Didn't they do that to another animal as well. something else in a zoo was actually something else. I can't remember

16-04-2007

Patrick- I agree on all counts with your 'best scenario' for the Vietnamese rhinos- bring them into a secure reserve- where instead of being widely dispersed, there is also a better chance of them meeting each other too. It would clarify if a male is still living or not. If not, take the risk and add a male from Java. Better than letting the Vietnam ones simply die out.

I have seen a photocard of the Javan rhino at Adelaide. It is looks a mature animal(female?) and is standing placidly feeding on a handful of hay held by the keeper. You can clearly see that the skin fold on the neck passes right over the body, unlike the on Great Indian. But the mosaic pattern on the skin isn't very clear, maybe because of its hide being thicker in captivity.

I didn't know this was the only known zoo specimen...

16-04-2007

pretty fascinating really! our humble little adelaide zoo had the only exapmle of the worlds rarest rhino - ever! melbourne zoo had javan tigers back in the day too. and a few years back some records were found that suggested the zoo may have actually bred thylacines. its would seem debatable given the period, but interesting nonetheless...

16-04-2007

From what i know at the moment, i wouldn't support capturing and keeping the vietnam-rhino's in a sanctuary for a variety of reasons...

16-04-2007

well expand on those jwer lol

i would support, depending on the circumstances in vietman- war, hard to get access to work - i mean funding for such a project would be supported, but the politics of going in and working in-situ

yea lest move all 15 to sunny northern QLD

16-04-2007

Was lazy when i typed that reply, still am really but i'll give it a go...

As far as i know:

First, locating rhino's in a thick jungle is barely impossible, noone really knows how many exactly are there, let alone where they are. The population might even be viable with animals in Laos and Cambodja...

They need to be caught, which is going to be very hard without injuring them, and within a short time-span which is going to be needed for this idea to work. Then you would need to tranquilize them well, and afaik there ain't many vet's around with experience on tranquilizing javan rhino's. By that time you'll find yourself in the middle of one of the densest forest in the world with a sleeping animal of possibly over a ton, who is ever going to get it out?

Let's say that all worked, and you have some of the caught animals in a holding area. You have no clue about the animals still at large, perhaps there are animals left because the trapping methods didn't work for them.

Problems with husbandry might be coming up, since noone ever cared for one in the last 100 or so years. Noone has a clue how these animals reproduce, they might be as easy as one-horned rhino's (as far as they can be called "easy", because it took the zoo-community a hell of a lot of time to know how to breed them, another story on it's own...), they could be as hard to breed as Sumatrans.

Okay, say you got that far and the animals are still doing okay, but there's no male or one needs to be imported. You are faced with taking a male out of a population of 40-60 animals. Taking a breeding male, and thus it's genes out of such a population without extensive research on genetics could be very much disastrous to that population. You have the same problems catching it with the added bonus of transporting it...

In my opinion, learning how to keep animals succesfully in captivity has always been a trial and error routine with many death in the first years of taking it into captivity. Losses this population can't afford.

17-04-2007

And all of that is under the assumption that the governments of those countries allow this to occur, and that both the range state, and intended destination countries are willing to provide CITES permits. There's every change that the governments would say no.

I'd like to see a bunch of non-Australians try to come over and take the last of our northern hairy-nosed wombats so they can attempt to breed them up in captivity elsewhere! Can you imagine how that would be received?

17-04-2007

If they were moved to a zoo. what country would it be in? Do we go with climate or experience with the keepers working with them? If the second send them to San Diego Wild Animal Park or Dvur Kralorve zoo.