- Indonesian conservation authorities have started building a new sanctuary for Sumatran rhinos in the Leuser Ecosystem on the northern tip of Sumatra.
- The facility will be the third in a network of Sumatran Rhino Sanctuaries (SRS), joining the Way Kambas SRS in southern Sumatra and the Kelian SRS in Indonesian Borneo.
- Conservationists plan to capture at least five rhinos from the wild in Leuser and move them to the new SRS as part of a captive-breeding program that’s seen as the best option for staving off the species’ extinction.
- There area currently seven rhinos at the Way Kambas SRS and one at the Kelian facility; in the wild, there are believed to be just 30-80 Sumatran rhinos left, all of them on Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo islands.
The groundbreaking for the facility took place on Nov. 11 inside the Leuser Ecosystem in East Aceh district, in Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra. The new facility, the third in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS) network, is one of Indonesia’s top strategies to help prevent the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) from going extinct in the wild. It is geared in particular toward the subpopulation found in the Leuser Ecosystem. The first SRS is in Way Kambas National Park in southern Sumatra, and the second in eastern Indonesian Borneo.
“The groundbreaking of the sanctuary is the beginning of a new momentum and our hope is that the construction process will go smoothly so it will be in line with our planned strategy of rescuing the rhinos,” Dedi Yansyah, program coordinator at the nonprofit Leuser Conservation Forum (FKL), told Mongabay in a phone interview on Nov. 12.
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