Indonesia refuses to send Sumatran rhinos to the U.S.

Nice attempt to get your 'program failure' spin on an article that's riddled with inaccuracies.

3 rhino were exported to England and 7 were exported to the USA. Torgamba was
repatriated and died at SRS and Ipuh and Emi successfully produced 3 calves. That's 9 animals which died in the US/UK not the grossly exaggerated figure of 18.

The animals in the US are a result of the ongoing initiative to form a captive population as is the only successful birth in Indonesia. Thankfully the decision to export animals will be made by the government.
 
Dicerorhinus said:
Nice attempt to get your 'program failure' spin on an article that's riddled with inaccuracies.

3 rhino were exported to England and 7 were exported to the USA. Torgamba was
repatriated and died at SRS and Ipuh and Emi successfully produced 3 calves. That's 9 animals which died in the US/UK not the grossly exaggerated figure of 18.

The animals in the US are a result of the ongoing initiative to form a captive population as is the only successful birth in Indonesia. Thankfully the decision to export animals will be made by the government.
Click to expand...

I only presented information that was in the article. The article was amended with corrections by the person posting it.

Please take your nasty trolling somewhere else Dicerorhinus.

Your rude belligerence does not give you any authority or expertise and only serves to embarrass you.
 
"Indonesia refuses to send sumatran rhinos to the US"

That headline doesn't represent the content of the article the decision is yet to be made and will be made by the government. Francesco Nardelli pretty much conceived the project while working under John Aspinall. The artical contains numerous qoutes which reflect opinion and as I stated contains numerous inaccuracies which Mr Nardelli does briefly touch. Don't be such a baby.
 
Dicerorhinus said:
"Indonesia refuses to send sumatran rhinos to the US"

That headline doesn't represent the content of the article the decision is yet to be made and will be made by the government. Francesco Nardelli pretty much conceived the project while working under John Aspinall. The artical contains numerous qoutes which reflect opinion and as I stated contains numerous inaccuracies which Mr Nardelli does briefly touch. Don't be such a baby.
Click to expand...

The national park is a governmental entity, and thus represents Indonesia in this matter.

If you have information to correct your alleged "numerous inaccuracies" then please present.
 
This is the first I have heard of any possible or hypothetical move of Rhinos to Cincinnati- even if its only in the form of a potential refusal. That is apart from the unrelated Bornean male 'Kertam' about whom there has been considerable discussion already and who it appears might/might not end up in Cincinnati in the longerterm, and depending on whether they can acquire a mate and breed from him in Borneo.

As I see it, the only suitable contender of the current animals at Way Kambas which could contribute anything by going to Cincinnati would be the second younger female(Rosa?) and it would only represent an attempt to breed her with Andalas' own brother, so not much point really? A 'baby rhino' mentioned in this article would be of no value in Cincinnati.

Or are they talking here about Rhinos that may be captured in the future?
 
DavidBrown said:
The national park is a governmental entity, and thus represents Indonesia in this matter.

If you have information to correct your alleged "numerous inaccuracies" then please present.
Click to expand...

The Ministry of Forestry make the decisions, which is even eluded to in the article.

18 rhino were not exported to the USA/UK
Perhaps there's a tenuous argument that one rhino (subur) didn't adjust to life at port lympne Ipuh also struggled for a while but the other seven animals did well.
Unfortunately I'm not sure I can publically correct a third inaccuracy
 
Yo Dicerorhinus, let's try and have a productive discussion instead of getting into another fracas.

Why do you think that the Indonesian government should approve sending more Sumatran rhinos into an ex-situ facility when it empirically didn't work well the first time? The end result of millions of dollars of effort and 20 years of work is that managers are considering mating a brother and sister with each other. How is this in any way a success that would justify rebooting the program?

Why are the millions of dollars that would be required to start another ex-situ not better spent on in-situ conservation?
 
The infuriating thing about Sumatran Rhino is that it was the first species bred in captivity, as long ago as 1889 in Calcutta. It is arguably the classic case of a species where zoos just lost interest. Even in the 1920s animals could have been obtained from Malaya or the Dutch East Indies (as they then were), but nobody bothered.
 
No endangered SE Asian species is safe when it's kept & bred only in native country. The risk of extinction is too hign, from any reason - be it poachers, natural disaster or diease.
After all, Chinese won't 'eat' their pandas (they're more valuable alive) but they're 'eating' world's rhinos!
In such situation, inbreeding can be justified.
Cloning may be a good solution, using those countless Southern Whites as surrogate mothers.
 
Elephas Maximus said:
Cloning may be a good solution, using those countless Southern Whites as surrogate mothers.
Click to expand...

This would be incredibly unlikely to work, as the Sumatran Rhino is only a distant cousin of the White Rhinoceros - you'd have more luck trying to clone the Woolly Rhinoceros using the Sumatran Rhino as a surrogate! ;)
 
Animals don't have to be very similar to carry embryos to term, the blood of the foetus and mother never mix, if they did the mother's antibodies would try to kill the foetus.

A Gaur was cloned in 2001 with a surrogate cow mother. Surrogates are no problem as long as the mother is the right size to carry it to term.

Cloning is the real difficulty. For every live clone there are dozens that die, and clones tend to be sickly and deformed.

You can clone small animals that breed quickly fairly easily, but it would be much harder with something as slow breeding as rhinoceros.

Preserving Sumatran tissue is important, but cloning would be a very difficult and expensive process and should only be a last resort.
 
Last edited:
David,

Perhaps you misunderstand. This isn't a case of rebooting the program it's the continuation of global captive breeding program with the exchange of animals as is integral in all managed programs.*

I'm not convinced that you're familiar with the history of the program. The majority of the animals (30) were distributed between facilities in range countries where no births occurred, with the exception of Minah. If it were not for the export of animals to the west it's very likely that even basic knowledge of Sumatran rhino reproductive biology would still be unknown (they are induced ovulators for example). I trust you do understand that the program was primarily populated with "doomed" individuals? and that many of these animals; because they were isolated, were post reproductive and effectively useless to the program.*

Having all the animals in one location is dangerous and the program has already suffered the catastrophic loss at Sungai Dusan where all seven animals died within a year, five of which succumbed to septicaemia in space three weeks. The fact is the remote locations and nature of the sites carry an inherent risk to the animals.*

Cincinnati is where the vast majority of expertise and resources are. Having more breeding animals in the US in close proximity to these resources can only further their understanding of Sumatran Rhino reproductive biology.*Rhino reproduce slowly and take years to reach sexual maturity so why not play to the strengths of the program and manage the species globally?*

You're grossly exaggerating the expense of exporting rhino to the USA.*

I want the species to persevere and knowing what I do I believe the species best hope is with the direct participation of facilities in the USA.*



Lamna,

I agree with your entire post.*
 
I wonder how much of those all dead rhinos were completely preserved, including ones from Cincinnati Zoo?
Disposing them when just tissue samples are collected is literally a crime against zoology science!
Sumatran rhinos deserve full-body mounts - not just skull & horns as usually happens with a few zoo rhinos that got lucky to be saved after death.
 
Dicerorhinus:

*How much do you think exporting a new batch of rhinos to ex-situ facilities would cost? I'm pretty sure that it would be in the millions when you factor in the need to build special holding facilities for them and the care to maintain them. So no, I am not exaggerating the cost of establishing a sustainable ex-situ rhino population. I think that you have no idea of what this magnitude of project costs when you factor in running and maintaining the project in perpetuity.


*You have great faith in the ability of reproductive science and technology to be able to produce a sustainable ex-situ population of Sumatran rhinos. Empirically, this technology has not worked in over 2 decades of attempts to produce a sustainable ex-situ population. You are always hand-waving that the project was hampered by the selection of "expendable" post-reproductive individuals as the founding stock. No doubt there is truth in that, but at the time the Sumatran rhinos were captured to establish the ex-situ population there were field biologists arguing that viable wild individuals were being captured too.

Our fundamental disagreement I think is that I do not share your faith that the reproductive science will work and a sustainable population of Sumatran rhinos can be produced.

With the confirmation that there are Sumatran rhinos left in Borneo and that there is still a core habitat for them in Sumatra, my opinion is that the many millions of dollars that would be needed for another attempt to establish a sustainable ex-situ population would be best spent supporting in-situ conservation. If reproductive science can help augment that then I'm all for it, but it seems to me that the ethical thing to do is to build in-situ facilities (or augment what already exists) rather than trying to slog the rhinos to Ohio or wherever.

Our disagreement I think is not about science, but about what the most practical and ethical path forward for Sumatran rhino conservation is. In the end the people who "own" the rhinos are the ones who get to make the decision so I'm under no illusions that my opinion has much meaning other than as someone who wants these rhinos to be around for the rest of the 21st century and beyond. I know that you want that too and have a different opinion of what the best course of action is.
 
Last edited:
lamna said:
Animals don't have to be very similar to carry embryos to term, the blood of the foetus and mother never mix...
Click to expand...

There's a lot on this thread which can easily be disputed, but I would just like to clarify a fact.

Your statement is not strictly true. During delivery and the detachment of the placenta, there is always some degree of bleeding and (usually limited) contact of blood. Although there are potential measures to get round this, it can be disastrous as maternal antibodies can attack fetal tissue (as you stated.) Perhaps a more familiar example is the Rhesus (esp. RhD) blood group reactivity in humans.
 
I did mean in general terms, and that using surrogates of different species is well established.

Biologically there would be nothing stopping you using a white rhinoceros cow to carry a Sumatran calves. Logistically that would be incredibly expensive and difficult.
 
IanRRobinson said:
The infuriating thing about Sumatran Rhino is that it was the first species bred in captivity, as long ago as 1889 in Calcutta.
Click to expand...

The interesting point about the Sumatran rhinoceros born in 1889 is that it was a sub-specific hybrid:-

Dicerorhinus sumatrensis sumatrensis x Dicerorhinus sumatrensis lasiotis

There was an earlier Sumatran rhinoceros born aboard a ship in Victoria Dock, London, in 1872 although the female was pregnant when captured.

(Incidentally, Rookmaaker records a much earlier captive rhinoceros birth – an Indian rhino - born 1824, in Kathmandu.)
 
DavidBrown said:
*How much do you think exporting a new batch of rhinos to ex-situ facilities would cost? ...... my opinion is that the many millions of dollars that would be needed for another attempt to establish a sustainable ex-situ population would be best spent supporting in-situ conservation.
Click to expand...

I don't see anywhere any suggestion that a whole new 'batch' of
rhinos should be exported to US/Western Zoos as happened previously in the 1980's earlier attempt.. I know the article refers to refusing to send 'several' rhinos to Cincinnati Zoo but the reality is that Cincinnati is the one Zoo that does need/deserve more animals to work with- as Dicerhorinus pointed out, they are the ones who developed the science and expertise in breeding in the first place- without their involvement the 'programme' would be dead in the water quite possibly and there would have beeen no birth at Way Kambas either. That they now only have a sibling pair to try to breed from is just how things have turned out and that could still be rectified by the addition of just one, or preferably two, more unrelated animals of suitable breeding age, one of each sex.
That's presuming they have enough space to hold either three or four animals- if not then they should designate which other Zoo would hold the 2nd pair if they ever have the luxury of such a decision again.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top