Which rhino species should be prioritized in conservation ? (poll)

I am glad to have voted for the Sumatran rhino.

 

I would recommend this book, If someone is interest in the Natural History of the Javan Rhino: "Udjung Kulon, The Land of the Last Javan Rhinoceros: With Local and General Data on the Most Important Faunal Species and Their Preservation in Indonesia"

 

Thanks for sharing @twilighter ! Much appreciated !

Is this a new book ? I haven't heard of it before, I haven't even heard of any books on the Sumatran rhino either so its great if books about these species are now being written.

 

@OC, no Hoogerwerff is / was the main authority on Javan rhino for decades past and this book is somewhat of a primer for the species.

TBH: I am really looking to see a new primer published by the Yayasan Badak organisation in Indonesia incorporating the newly gained expertise, knowledge and ethology/ecology on the Javan rhino species in Ujung Kulon. Much has been gained in the last decade which has put the Javan species back on the road to recovery.

The road to recovery for Sumatran rhino is yet far off, allthough I am more hopeful now that it is primarily RM Indonesia to work for conserving both the Bornean and Sumateran Sumatran rhino. The region where the Sumatran rhino are located in Kalimantan is where I personally travelled and tracked the jungle for a good few weeks. An amazing forest complex deep in the interior and at the time far removed from human habitations. The reason they are still there is also less pressure from human populations.

 

Thanks for this @Kifaru Bwana ! Never knew there were books on both of these species out there (though I know with the Indian rhino there are and particularly Hermanta Mishra's book) but then I guess I never looked into it enough.

Sounds like an amazing place to visit indeed ! when you were in Kalimantan did you see any traces of the rhinos or hear anything from the local peoples about these animals ?

 

Nope, I tracked the region some 20 years ago along the sungai Mahakam and at the time it was a complete unknown that rhinos might even venture there. We walked it for 3+ weeks and only came across 12-15 people going in the opposite direction .....

I think at the time it was thought that the major portion of the Bornean subspecies ranged in Danum Valley, Sabah, R. Malaysia. Whether, some of this population was really all but hunted out, or that some individuals left the park to venture into Indonesian range ..., should be an interesting one. Given the location and the distance from major river system I tend to think the rhinos might always have been local and a best kept secret of local Dayak lore, who knows.

Rest assured, if ever I can go back here I will and if I die trying I will die a happy man truly, deeply, humbly.

 

It sounds like an amazing expedition with or without rhinos experienced, I bet you saw an incredible amount of wildlife during that period.

I tend to think that rhinos (both Javan and Sumatran) though functionally extinct may have clung on in regions where they were believed to be extirpated in miniscule numbers (perhaps one or two) for much longer than is currently thought.

However, I am very sceptical about these animals persisting now due to the scale of the pressures they are facing.

The other day I listened to this podcast episode on Mongabay on the Sumatran rhino which you may find interesting. For me it was very interesting as it appears that the tracks long believed to be evidence of the rhino in protected areas in Indonesia are quite probably those of Malayan tapir.

Podcast: Where oh where are the Sumatran rhinos?.

 

*Sigh* not sounding any more hopeful is it?

 

Sadly for the Sumatran rhino things seem to be dire.

It is quite an interesting podcast episode really (though depressing too) and I definitely recommend listening to it.

It seems that in Bukit Barisan Selatan the rhino is very sadly possibly gone and the signs of rhino are diminishing in Way Kambas.

 

Video from Mongabay on captive breeding challenges with the Sumatran rhino:

 

The is the Foreword to the epic
monograph by Francesco Nardelli

The rhinoceros

Foreword
by John Aspinall

"I began collecting fine illustrated books on mammals over thirty years ago and soon noticed how few there were, compared with the number of similar books on birds and flowers. Francesco Nardelli's Rhinoceros will help to fill the gap. The production of this book is a bold venture inspired by love and admiration, rather than commercial logic or academic zeal. A magnificent tome on the multicoloured guenons might have been a safer bet, but here Nardelli is looking not for safety but personal satisfaction. This noble work on the rhinoceros has been conceived out of his fear for their imminent extermination.
The quality of Matthew Hillier's paintings faithfully portrays the separate physical characteristics and peculiarities of the five surviving types, all of which can still be found in the wild state - but only just. They are literally being eliminated across the board before our eyes, as we read these words. The northern race of the white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is at its last gasp, reduced to a mere 17 and less than a dozen in captivity. The southern white and the black have been cut down to a few thousand over what little remains of their erstwhile vast range in Africa. The great Indian one-homed rhino is still hovering over four figures, but his last strongholds in Assam and Nepal are shrinking from the pressures of human intrusion. The Sumatran, two-homed, hairy rhinoceros is confined to isolated pockets of flat land and montane forests in Sumatra, Borneo, and mainland Malaysia, his numbers whittled down to less than a thousand, while the Javan rhino, a close cousin of the great Indian, is restricted to the peninsula of Ujung Kulon on the westernmost tip of the island of Java, a habitat that can sustain a population of not more than 60 animals. Whether we. like it or not, we are living through the epoch of Homo vastans. We watch with horror the fading efforts of our close relatives, the higher mammals, to avoid the doom that we have set in store for them.
The massive bulk of the great white rhinoceros; the brave spirit of his smaller cousin, the black; the armour plating and forward-thrusting tushes of the giant Indian race; the secretive and nocturnal habits of the Javan and Sumatran have not been enough to do more- than postpone the day of reckoning. Some of these qualities, along with many others painstakingly described in this book, have enabled these mammals to outlast the millennia and to endure the recent centuries of persecution at our hands. Any concept that the great rhino family was already failing before the cancerous advance of civilization can be confidently discarded. The works of Harris, Lydekker, Sclater, and many others bear witness to the astounding number of black and white rhinos in the early part of the last century. Winston Churchill, who shot three black rhino `monsters' near Makindo in Kenya one morning, described these beautifully adapted browsers as `odd grim stragglers from the stone age'. He believed them to be `ponderous brutes, invulnerable to pain and fear'. One bull that he shot reminded him of an `engine or some great steam barge impervious to bullets'. I wish that Churchill's colourful language conveyed any truth. On a trip to Lake Rudolf Richard Meinertzhagen bagged three black rhinos before breakfast, and he was a naturalist and the author of The Birds of Arabia, a classic of its kind. Neither man, however great and "admirable in other ways, had the slightest compunction in the perpetration of these gruesome crimes. I regret to say that the\, represented the norm in this respect, not the exceptions of their class and race.
On the whole the rhinoceros has suffered throughout the ages from a catalogue of misinformation based on ignorance and superstition. It is hard to know whether western or eastern civilization has erred most. Generally considered cumbersome, he is in fact agile, being able to halt instantly at full gallop and turn on his own shadow. When a rhino trots he appears to prance on air-compressed springs. His neck muscle and the famous weapon it powers is a wonder of nature and makes an adult rhino immune to the attacks of predators other than man. Before the advent of firearms a veritable war party of braves was required to bring down a rhino and few succumbed to the spears and arrows without exacting a toll.
Those who think him stupid expose their own folly, as the ethologists who have studied him carefully in the wild state, without exception, consider the rhino to be the most intelligent of all the Perissodactyla. Goddard, Schenkel, van Strien, and Laurie have spent an aggregate of over twenty years studying black, Indian, and Sumatran rhinos. They believe these creatures to be extraordinarily well adapted and responsive to their environment. It is only man's explosion in numbers from one to five thousand million in less than a million years, accompanied by the recent excesses of his technosphere, that has all but sealed the rhino's fate. Those who love and admire rhinos must still fight for them and protect them, if possible, in their dwindling wild redoubts, as well as breeding them in captivity if they can. Each task is about as difficult as the other, but both are vital if he is to be ushered into the next century.
If this wonderful but sad book helps save a few rhinos from extinction, or at least delay. the date of their execution, then I know that the man behind it will have been repaid in some measure for the risks that-he has taken in conceiving a book of such unusual quality for a market so small, and for an animal so little appreciated and so savagely abused.
John Aspinall"

 

Very interesting to read this foreword @twilighter and thank you for sharing it !

Beautifully written in some parts and verbose in others (he obviously wasn't much of a fan of Churchill or Jonathan Kingdon lol ! ) but he clearly loved his rhinos didn't he ?

There are things that I really truly don't like about the guy (namely his political beliefs) but he had his heart in the right place when it came to species conservation.

I have to admire what he attempted to do with the Sumatran rhino and what he succeeded in achieving with the black rhino.

 

Thank you @Onychorhynchus coronatus ! The whole book, with a chapter dedicated to each of the 5 species, is worth reading. I have only the text version, while the original luxury edition with the marvelous paintings and sketches by Matthew Hillier reach $1000. Francesco Nardelli is one of the most dedicated supporters of the Sumatran Rhino Conservation and looking forward to his new book "The Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) Natural History and Conservation Saga"

 

It sounds like a great addition to your collection / natural history library !

On the subject of Francesco Nardelli, I don't know a lot about him but I remember reading commentary articles of his on the subject of the Sumatran rhino on Mongabay like these :

Do we really want to save the Sumatran rhinoceros? (commentary)

I also remember him being quoted in a Jeremy Hance article on the Sumatran rhino on Mongabay on the role of John Aspinall in the conservation of the species :

“Several of the personalities in human history were misunderstood, criticized or even condemned at first, to recognize only much later their geniality. I would place the conservationist John Aspinall among them,” Francesco Nardelli, the executive director of the Sumatran Rhino Project, said of the man he worked with for 12 years. “A man of substance.”

 

Sorry for my laziness and ignorance, but I couldn't find an answer quickly on google.

Why are rhino horns stored, at great expense I imagine?
Sky news are featuring the ongoing efforts to prevent poaching including cutting off horns of living animals to make them less attractive. I knew about that, but never thought about what happened to the horns. Apparently, they are stored and moved around frequently to avoid being stolen. Are they simply being stored in case someone changes the law somewhere to allow them to be sold?