14 Jun
2006 - Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia/Gland, Switzerland
– A motion-triggered camera trap set up in a remote
jungle has captured the first-ever photo of a
rhino in the wild on the island of Borneo, the
Sabah Wildlife Department and WWF announced today.
The rhino is believed to be
one of a population of as few as 13 individuals
whose existence was confirmed during a field survey
last year in the interior forests of Sabah, Malaysia
in an area known as the “Heart of Borneo”.
A handful of rhinos are thought
to survive in addition to the 13, scattered across
Sabah but isolated from each other.
Conservationists hope that this
population of 13 is viable and will be able to
reproduce if protected from poaching. A full-time
rhino monitoring team was established at the end
of 2005 in Sabah to monitor the rhinos and their
habitat, and to keep poachers away. The camera
traps, set up in February 2006, are remotely activated
by infrared triggers when animals walk by.
“This is an encouraging sign
for the future of rhinoceros conservation work
in Sabah,” said Mahedi Andau, Director of the
Sabah Wildlife Department.
"While the total number
of Borneo rhinos remaining is uncertain, we do
know there are very, very few. To capture a photo
of one just a few months after placing camera
traps in the area is extraordinary.”
The rhinos on Borneo spend their
lives in dense jungle where they are rarely seen,
which accounts for the lack of any previous photographs
of them in the wild.
“These are very shy animals
that are almost never seen in the wild,” said
Raymond Alfred, Project Manager of WWF-Malaysia’s
Asian Rhinoceros and Elephant Action Strategy
(AREAS).
“Based on the photo, we can
tell this is a mature and healthy individual thanks
to the availability of plentiful, good-quality
forage in the forest. We hope to take more photos
over the coming months of other rhinos so we can
piece together clues about this tiny, precarious
population.”
The rhinos found on Borneo are
regarded as a subspecies of the Sumatran rhinoceros,
which means it has different physical characteristics
to the animals found in Sumatra (Indonesia) and
Peninsular Malaysia. The Sumatran rhinoceros is
one of the world’s most critically endangered
species, with a total global population of fewer
than 300. On Borneo, there have been no confirmed
reports of the species, apart from those in Sabah,
for almost 20 years, leading experts to fear that
rhinos may now be extinct on the rest of the island.
The main threats to the last
rhinos on Borneo are poaching – its horn and virtually
all of its body parts are valuable on the black
market – and loss of its forested habitat due
to land conversion for other uses such as agriculture.
WWF is working with the Sabah Foundation and the
Sabah Wildlife Department to establish a Rhinoceros
and Orangutan Research Programme Centre in the
Heart of Borneo forest area to bolster the rhino
monitoring and research work in that area.
Sabah and the forests of the
Heart of Borneo still hold huge tracts of continuous
natural forests, which are some of the most biologically
diverse habitats on Earth, with high numbers of
unique animal and plant species. This is one of
the world’s only two places – the other being
Indonesia’s Sumatra Island – where orang-utans,
elephants and rhinos still co-exist and where
forests are currently large enough to maintain
viable populations.
WWF aims to assist Borneo's
three nations (Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia)
to conserve the Heart of Borneo – a total of 220,000km2
of equatorial rainforest – through a network of
protected areas and sustainably managed forest,
and through international cooperation led by the
Bornean governments and supported by a global
effort.
END NOTES:
• The Borneo rhino is considered
to be a separate subspecies (D. S. harrissoni)
from the rhinos on Sumatra and mainland Malaysia.
They feed on the leaves of a wide variety of seedlings
and young trees. Unlike other rhino species and
other large herbivorous mammals in Borneo (elephant,
wild cattle, deer), the Sumatran rhino is a strict
forest-dweller that ventures out of forest cover
only in unusual situations. Sumatran rhinos are
currently found in Peninsular Malaysia, and on
the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
• The main reasons for the drop
in rhino numbers are due to illegal hunting and
the fact that the remaining rhinos are so isolated
they may rarely or never meet to breed. In addition,
there is evidence that a high proportion of the
female rhinos on Borneo have reproductive problems.
Many of the remaining rhinos are old and possibly
beyond reproductive age, so the death rate may
be exceeding the birth rate.
• Other threatened wildlife
in Borneo includes clouded leopards, sun bears,
and three species of leaf monkeys found nowhere
else in the world. The island is also home to
ten primate species, more than 350 bird species,
150 reptiles and amphibians and 15,000 plants.
• A field survey of Sabah’s
rhinos in May 2005 involved about 120 people in
16 teams. It was undertaken by the Sabah Wildlife
Department, Sabah Forestry Department, Sabah Parks,
the Sabah Foundation, WWF-Malaysia, the Kinabatangan
Orang-utan Conservation Project, SOS Rhino, Universiti
Malaysia Sabah and Operation Raleigh. Also participating
in the effort to protect Borneo’s remaining rhinos
are the Sabah Wildlife Department, the Sabah Foundation,
SOS Rhino and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
