BREEDING ENDANGERED SUMATRAN RHINOS: EFFORTS, SUCCESS, SETBACKS

WAY KAMBAS SUMATRAN RHINO CONSERVATION CENTER

newborn Sumatran rhino

The Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary opened in 1995 in Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia near the city of Bandar Lampung. Supported by donations, mainly from the United States, it is run by the International Rhino Foundation, which years has worked to protect wild rhinos in Asia and Africa and to boost populations with captive breeding. As of the late 2000s no offspring had been produced and donor fatigue was setting in. Efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos in zoos have largely failed,

Indra Harsaputra wrote in The Jakarta Post, “In Way Kambas National Park in East Lampung, a conservation center has sprung up to save the Sumatran rhino. Occupying an area of 100 hectares of tropical forest in the 125,621 hectares of the national park, the sanctuary was established as part of the government’s Indonesian Rhino Conservation Strategy and Action Plan. [Source: Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, October 22 2013]

The five rhinos at the sanctuary — Andatu, Ratu, Andalas, Rosa and Bina — get daily checkups to ward off common ailments such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and salmonella. After a lunch of bananas, Ratu and Andatu walked out of their cage to spend their time outdoors in the 100-hectare sanctuary, which is surrounded by an electrified fences that spans 4 kilometers.

All-Indonesia Zoo Association secretary-general Tony Sumampau said that the sanctuary needed an additional stud rhino to meet a goal of a 3 percent population increase by 2020. “The male rhino and Rosa will be mated so as to produce a generation unrelated to Andatu,” Tony, who is also director of the Indonesian Safari Park, said. “It’s also necessary to protect the Sumatran rhinos previously discovered in East Kalimantan.”

Also on the agenda for the specialists at the meeting was the establishment of teams to set up rhino sperm banks, among other things. According to Tony, Kalimantan is also home to Sumatran rhinos, as per the research of Hermann Witkamp, a Dutch geologist. “Witkamp is recorded to have proposed the protection of a two-million-hectare zone as a roving rhino region, but after the big wildfire in 1982, everybody thought the rhinos were nowhere to be found.”

Sumatran Rhino Breeding Efforts in Malaysia

The Borneo Rhino Sanctuary (BRS) located in Tabin Wildlife Reserve near Sabah’s east coast town of Lahad Datu in Malaysia was the home of three Sumatran rhinoceroses — two females Iman and Puntung and the male Tam — until they died in the late 2010s. Tam was captured after he wandered into a palm oil plantation with an injured foot, while Puntung was taken from the wild when it was realized she was alone in a forest fragment with no chance of meeting a male for breeding. The Sabah government decided in March 2014 to trap all remaining wild rhinos rather than leave them in the forest where chances of meeting a mate and breeding are low. [Source: Lim Chia Ying, The Star, June 2, 2014]

There was much when a female named Putang and Iman was captured on one of two traps laid out for her in the Danum Valley Conservation Area. Hopes were high that she would conceive and bear offspring but these expectations were soon dashed when it was was found with eight non-malignant tumours in her reproductive tract. In Puntung, her uterus has cysts, making it impossible for her to become pregnant or sustain an embryo.

“It’s unfortunate that female rhinos have a tendency of being infected by tumours and cysts ifthey do not produce babies once becoming sexually mature,” Dr John Payne of the Borneo Rhino Alliance told The Star. “In the case of Puntung, it’s likely that she suffered a failed pregnancy in the past while Iman’s condition implies that she had been sick for a long time. Efforts to use in-vitro fertilisation failed.

In 2003, disease killed off seven Sumatran rhinos in a 16-year-old captive breeding program in central Malaysia, shutting down one of the few efforts to save the species from extinction. An effort to breed rhinos in captivity at the Sungai Dusun Sumatran Rhino Conservation Centre in Hulu Selangor north of Kuala Lumpur was a disaster. Five of them died. Two rhinos died in November 2002 of bleeding in the their lungs and intestines caused by lesions caused by a bacterial infection.

Breeding Sumatran Rhinos

Efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos in captivity has largely been unsuccessful. Finally in July 2001, a healthy Sumatran rhino named Andalas was born at the Cincinnati zoo. It was the first in more than a century. The previous one was in Calcutta in 1889. The first coordinated effort at captive breeding began in the 1980s, and about half the initial 40 breeding rhinos died without a successful pregnancy. Terri Roth, who heads the Cincinnati zoo's Center for Research of Endangered Wildlife and began working on the rhino project in 1996, told Associated Press it took years just to understand their eating habits and needs and decades more to understand their mating patterns. The animals tend not to be interested in companionship, let alone romance. "They're definitely difficult to breed because they're so solitary," Roth said. "You can't just house them together. So the only time you can get a successful breeding is if you just put them together when the female is going to be receptive."

Paul Watson wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Eighteen Sumatran rhinos rounded up and moved from their forest habitat in the mid-1980s and early 1990s in an effort to save the species from extinction. One of the rhinos died as he was being trapped, and the other 17 were dispersed to zoos in the United States, Britain, Indonesia and Malaysia. Experts thought the rhinos would happily breed in captivity. Instead, they quickly began to die. Several slowly starved to death because they couldn't stomach the hay or other zoo food, and others succumbed to digestive problems and disease. As of 2007 only four of the captured animals were alive — two in the Sumatran sanctuary and two in the Cincinnati Zoo, which was expecting its third calf to be born in 2007. [Source: Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2007]

“It was a small miracle that Andalas' father, Ipuh, survived long enough in his cramped Cincinnati enclosure to become a proud papa. "Everybody in the zoo community thought they would adapt to hay and grain the way the black and white rhinos from Africa and the Indian rhinos did," zookeeper Steve Romo said by phone from Los Angeles. "That turned out not to be the case. When I was in Cincinnati, our first female basically starved to death. She wasted away to nothing.

Ipuh was supposed to be conditioned to eat hay before arriving in Cincinnati in 1991, but he wasn't interested in the meals served. "Over a six-month period, this animal had lost 260 pounds," Romo recalled. "You could see his shoulder blades, backbone and ribs, his pelvic bones." When all seemed lost, the zookeeper had a eureka moment.

"Ipuh, basically, was probably 24 hours away from death," Romo said. "The zoo director told me, 'Anything you want to do, we'll try.' I phoned San Diego and had some ficus shipped in. It was probably too late, and the vets didn't even want me to try it." Five boxes of ficus leaves arrived express from the coast. When Romo was 75 feet away from Ipuh with a fistful of fresh leaves, "He put his head up. He could smell it. He got up and walked to the next stall and he began eating. Basically, the agreement was that San Diego was going to send ficus until he died. But he didn't die."

Within 13 months, Ipuh was ready for his first try at mating. He was paired up with a young female named Emi, whose mother had been killed by poachers in Indonesia. She was transferred from the L.A. Zoo to Cincinnati in 1995 for breeding, and she gave birth to Andalas six years later. He weighed in at 76.2 pounds, with long black hair and a sly look. A year later, Romo and the calf moved to Los Angeles, where ficus trees growing on city land provided steady food. To make sure Andalas had enough of the ficus leaves he liked most, zoo staff scouted out the different types of trees on private property and asked homeowners whether they would like to help feed the Sumatran rhinos. "Some people were happy for us to come out and cut ficus," Romo said. "Others never called."

On 2007 Andalas was moved to Indonesia. He was understandably tired and frustrated when he arrived after 62 hours in a cage — 50 hours in flight and 12 hours in a truck. A wildlife specialist in Indonesia said said. "We could see his ribs then. Now we cannot. And he had long blond hair at first. Now it's a bit darker."

Effort to Get Captive Sumatran Rhino to Breed

On the effort to get Andalas to breed, Paul Watson wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Promoting the sex life of a stud Sumatran rhino from Los Angeles is an intricate affair involving mud, massages and frequent foot rubs. His species may be heading for extinction, but a male still has needs. So Andalas, who flew here from the Los Angeles Zoo, in February 2007, is getting the pampered treatment from his Indonesian keepers. They hand-feed him his favorite ficus leaves, play hide-and-seek with him in the rain forest, gently nuzzle him nose to horn, and massage his cracked feet along with the soft spots of his ample butt. [Source: Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2007]

“Moving Andalas to Indonesia is a gamble that has to pay off. "This is a second chance and probably also the last chance, to be honest," Van Strien said from Doorn, in the Netherlands. "If this does not work, I think it's going to be extremely difficult to convince the donors to keep on providing funds for the sanctuary." Sumatran rhinos also need long, regular wallows in gooey mud unsullied by their own waste to feel good, a pleasure they don't often get at zoos, Riyanto said. Most of those locked up for captive breeding live close to each other, "separated only by bars." "And they don't like it," he said. "They don't like to see each other. They get bored. They don't even have any desire to reproduce, no sex drive."

To be in shape to mate, a male rhino also needs satisfying meals, something more to his taste than bales of zoo hay. Even with the right diet, young males often need a keeper's guiding hand to get their groove on. The odds of a successful union improve if the female doesn't inflict serious wounds with her long, razor-sharp canines, Riyanto said.

Andalas lives with four other Sumatran rhinos — three females and a male named Torgamba. The 250-acre sanctuary is in Indonesia's Way Kambas National Park, which itself is threatened by illegal loggers and hunters. The rhinos are surrounded by a 6,000-volt fence to keep them in and poachers out. The circular sanctuary is divided into fenced-off enclosures that meet in the center, like pieces of a pie. That's where breeding couples can mate in relative privacy.

Ratu was rescued in September 2005 after she wandered out of Way Kambas. Terrified villagers, who had never seen a rhino before, thought she was the dreaded Babi Ngepet, a mythical pig-man blamed for rapes and other villainy. The villagers wanted to kill her, but police arrived in time and called Riyanto. With sirens wailing and villagers shouting, Riyanto and his men pursued the rhino from dawn until midday. At one point, she was so exhausted she slipped, panting, into a sewage pit. Eventually coaxed into a truck, Ratu was delivered to the nearby sanctuary. Now she seems eager for a mate.

Sumatran Rhinos Born in Indonesia

Three Sumatran rhinos were born in Indonesia in 2022 and 2023. On the one in November 2023, AFP reported: A female rhino named Delilah gave birth to a yet-to-be-named male calf weighing 25 kilograms (55 pounds) at Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary located in Way Kambas National Park in the Lampung Province in western Sumatra. The fathere was a rhino called Harapan. [Source: AFP, November 27, 2023]

It was the fifth calf born under a semi-wild breeding programme at the park, Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said in a statement. The new addition to the Sumatran rhino herd at Way Kambas, which numbers 10, comes after another baby Sumatran rhino was born there in September."This birth is the second birth of the Sumatran Rhino in 2023. This further strengthens the government's commitment to Rhino conservation in Indonesia," she said. A conservation guard found Delilah lying next to her newborn calf. Successful births are rare. A male rhino named Andatu, born in 2012 at Way Kambas, was the first Sumatran rhino birthed in an Indonesian sanctuary in more than 120 years.

In September 2023, a Sumatran rhinoceros female calf has been born to a local female rhino named Ratu and Andalas, a former resident of Ohio’s Cincinnati Zoo, at the Way Kambas National Park. CNN reported: Photos shared by the forestry ministry showed the newborn calf, weighing about 27 kilograms (60 pounds), covered in black hair and looking bright-eyed next to her mother. Within 45 minutes of her natural birth, the calf was able to stand and began feeding from her mother within four hours, the ministry said. [Source: Heather Chen, CNN, October 3, 2023]

In March 2022, A Sumatran rhino’s mother, named Rosa, gave birth to a female calf at the at Way Kambas National Park in the Lampung Province on March 24, 2022 according to Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment. The new Sumatran rhino at the sanctuary in Indonesia marks the first birth of the species at the facility in 10 years. It also comes after the mother rhino experienced eight miscarriages. The environment ministry in Indonesia and the Kambas national park partnered in 1998 on a captive reproduction program for the nearly-extinct Sumatran rhinos. [Source: Anisha Kukreja, NBC News, March 31, 2022]

Wiratno, the director general of conservation at the environment ministry, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, believes that the park is the only viable place where the natural breeding of Sumatran rhinos could take place “with the support of technology and collaboration of expertise both from within and outside the country.”

In June 2012, a Sumatran rhinoceros named Ratu gave birth at Way Kambas National Park to male calf named Andatu, who weighed 20 kilograms at birth. . It was only the fourth recorded case of a Sumatran rhino being born in captivity in a century and the first rhino birth in captivity in Indonesia in 124 years... A spokesman for Indonesia's forest ministry, Masyhud, told the AFP news agency that Ratu's labour had gone "smoothly and naturally". "It's really a big present for the Sumatran rhino breeding efforts as we know that this is a very rare species which have some difficulties in their reproduction," he added."This is the first birth of a Sumatran rhino at a [Source: BBC, June 23, 2012]sanctuary in Indonesia."

It was Ratu's third pregnancy. The previous two ended in miscarriages. The father of the baby rhino, Andalas, was born at Cincinnati Zoo in the US in 2001 — the first Sumatran rhino to be delivered in captivity in 112 years. He was brought to Indonesia in 2007 to mate with Ratu, who was born in the wild but wandered out of a forest and was taken in by the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary. Afterwards, the US-based International Rhino Foundation said that a veterinary team would harvest Ratu's placental cells, which could be used to generate stem cells. Stem cells had the potential to be useful for many purposes in the near future, including curing diseases and helping promote reproduction, it said.

In 2016, Ratu gave birth to another calf — a healthy and active female that weighed about 20 kilograms (45 pounds). The father was Andalas. Ratu was given a hormone supplement daily during her pregnancy to help ensure it went to full-term. [Source: Stephen Wright, Associated Press, May 13, 2016]

Cincinnati Zoo Tries to Mate Rhino Siblings to Save Species

In July 2013, Associated Press reported: “With the survival of a species on the line, Cincinnati Zoo scientists are hoping to mate their lone female Sumatran rhino with her little brother. The Cincinnati Zoo has been a pioneer in captive breeding of the rhino species, producing the first three born in captivity in modern times. Its conservationists this month brought back the youngest, 6-year-old Harapan, from the Los Angeles Zoo and soon will try to have him mate with the zoo's female — his biological sister — 8-year-old Suci. [Source: Associated Press. July 21, 2013]

"We absolutely need more calves for the population as a whole; we have to produce as many as we can as quickly as we can," said Terri Roth, who heads the zoo's Center for Research of Endangered Wildlife. "The population is in sharp decline and there's a lot of urgency around getting her pregnant."

Critics of captive breeding programs say they often do more harm than good and can create animals less likely to survive in the wild. Inbreeding increases the possibility of bad genetic combinations for offspring. "We don't like to do it, and long term, we really don't like to do it," Roth said, adding that the siblings' parents were genetically diverse, which is a positive for the plan. "When your species is almost gone, you just need animals and that matters more than genes right now — these are two of the youngest, healthiest animals in the population."

The parents of the three rhinos born in Cincinnati have died, but their eldest offspring, 11-year-old Andalas, was moved to a sanctuary in Indonesia in 2007 where became a father after mating with a wild-born rhino there. Mating between such close rhino relatives might happen in the wild, Roth said, but it's difficult to know because the animals are so rare. If the offspring of such a mating then bred with an unrelated rhino, the genetic diversity would resume in the next generation, she said.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated January 2025