Documentaries Featuring Sumatran or Javan Rhinos?

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FriendofPachyderms

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Hi there! I have recently watched "The Last Stand of the Javan Rhino" and the Indonesian episode of "Our National Parks" with Sumatran Rhinos. Are there other documentaries/short films to watch featuring these animals?
 
As well as 'Seven Worlds, One Planet' mentioned above, the Sumatran rhinoceros also appears in two episodes of 'Natural World':
  • Borneo - Island in the Clouds (1998)
  • Wild Indonesia - Magical Forests (2000)
The only film I have found so far with footage of the Javan rhinoceros is also an episode of 'Natural World', albeit only as its later airing of 'Nature' from the USA:
  • Vietnam - The Country, Not the War (1991)
I do not think the rhino footage from this documentary was original, and was probably stock footage from some earlier programme. The one show I can find mentioned on the BBC genome page that also includes Javan rhino footage was the 'The Last Forty', the fifth episode of 'The Rare Ones' filmed by Eugen Schuhmacher and aired in 1965. From what I gather, he was the first person ever to film a Javan rhino in the wild. However, this show is seemingly not available online.
Stock footage from this show may have also been used in the 1996 two-part BBC series 'Winners and Losers' that tracked the fortunes of the animals from 'The Rare Ones', but that is also missing save for the final 50 seconds or so, including the credits.
 
I have just found another documentary, again from 1991, that contains both Javan and Sumatran rhinos.

It first aired in the UK 1991 as 'Playing at Noah', part of the Horizon strand of programmes. It then aired in 1992 in the USA as part of the Nova series, titled 'Sex and the Single Rhino'. The Javan rhino footage seems to mostly be the same as 'Vietnam - The Country, Not the War' mentioned above. There is much more Sumatran rhino footage, including showing the capture of an animal in Sumatra and showing captive individuals at Cincinnati and Port Lympne.
 
DesertRhino150 said:
I have just found another documentary, again from 1991, that contains both Javan and Sumatran rhinos.

It first aired in the UK 1991 as 'Playing at Noah', part of the Horizon strand of programmes. It then aired in 1992 in the USA as part of the Nova series, titled 'Sex and the Single Rhino'. The Javan rhino footage seems to mostly be the same as 'Vietnam - The Country, Not the War' mentioned above. There is much more Sumatran rhino footage, including showing the capture of an animal in Sumatra and showing captive individuals at Cincinnati and Port Lympne.
Click to expand...

I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed 'Sex and the Single Rhino'. Although not the main focus of the documentary, the footage of Bagus' capture, transport and introduction to Mahatu at the Cincinnati Zoo was an incredible window into the breeding program. There was a great dialogue surrounding different conservation methods (ex-situ vs in-situ, how much confidence we can put into artificial methods, etc.), which has an added poignancy when we look back on it today. Alongside the mention of Javan rhinos still surviving in Vietnam (albeit only 12) and the Javan tiger going extinct just 11 years prior.
 
'Sex and the Single Rhino' was a documentary that we showed in a conservation biology discussion class that I taught at UCLA when I was a graduate student. It was only a few years old then, and the AZA Sumatran rhino program was still active. It stimulated some interesting discussion about whether the ex-situ program in the zoos was a good idea or an unwise diversion of attention and funds away from the primary task of preserving the Sumatran rhinos and their habitat in the wild.

The ex-situ program resulted in Andalas and a lot of people outside of Indonesia seeing Sumatran rhinos who otherwise would not see them, but whether that meaningfully contributed to their conservation is still an open question.
 
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Happy to report I've discovered another one! 'Forgotten Rhino' from 2007. I haven't watched it in its entirety yet but it features footage of Javan, Sumatran and Indian rhinoceroses, and discusses the conservation of each. It's not terribly hard to find DVD copies for sale online (for my fellow physical media fans ;)), but you can also watch it for free here.
 
I have just watched another documentary containing Javan rhinoceros, this one with different and, I would say, much better footage than all the ones I have previously watched. It is from Krakatoa: the Day that Shook the World. It first aired in 1983 as part of the Survival strand in the UK, before airing on Nature in the USA the following year. While a brief clip of the rhino appears near the beginning, the bulk of the footage is in the last seven minutes or so.
 
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