BORA is in the process of reformulating its role. Look out for a new website in January 2021

Nov 12 2020

BORA is in the process of reformulating its role. Look out for a new website in January 2021

For Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA), the deaths of the last native rhinos in Malaysia has prompted us to consider our next steps. This process has forced us to contemplate all that we have worked towards over these past years and the remarkable support we have received in our mission to save the Sumatran Rhino in Malaysia.

Sime Darby Foundation had supported BORA’s work on the Hairy (Sumatran) rhino from 2009 to 2016 when, time and again, hopes were dashed and it became clear that the Foundation was supporting a unique but increasingly high-risk project. The Chairman, Tun Musa Hitam, and CEO, Hjh. Dr. Yatela Zainal Abidin, stuck their necks out repeatedly in the hope that the work being done would turn around the steady decline in options to save the species in Malaysia. Although they, and many others, may think that this support was wasted, they would be wrong.

Looking at just a seven-year window in a decades-long story misses the big picture. It is absolutely necessary to judge the work that the Foundation supported in a global and long-term context. Almost incredibly, when the Foundation decided that further funding could not be justified, the Government of Malaysia took over. Under a project entitled “Application of Advanced Reproductive Technology to Endangered Species in Sabah”, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Malaysia (now Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources) has funded through Sabah Wildlife Department the development of many aspects of assisted reproductive technology, and a laboratory, Reproductive Innovation Centre for Wildlife and Livestock, located in the Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, in Sandakan.

This Centre is now unique in Malaysia in terms of skilled staffing, equipment and storage of the cryopreserved gametes of more than 10 endangered wildlife species. It has emerged as a Malaysian national centre which, due to the historical background, happens to be located in Sandakan, Sabah.

A Malaysian team able to safely capture, translocate and care for Hairy rhinos, and put them under and recover well from general anaethesia Knowledge on how to sustain Hairy rhinos that are chronically sick with cysts, tumours and associated bleeding, while at the same time allowing periodic, planned harvest of egg cells.

Some of the significant outcomes of the seven-year support by Sime Darby Foundation and Government of Malaysia from 2016 to 2020 include:

The pioneering assistance and continuing interest of world-class cutting edge rhino reproductive scientists in Germany (Professor Thomas Hildebrandt and team at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin), Italy (Professor Cesare Galli of Avantea laboratory, Cremora) and Indonesia (Professor Arief Boediono and colleagues at IPB University, Bogor)

Living cell cultures of the last four Hairy rhinos in Malaysia, developed by Associate Professor Muhammad Lokman Bin Md. Isa of the International Islamic University Malaysia, as well as in Germany and USA, from which Bornean rhino gametes can potentially be made at any time in the future (genetically, the last four native rhinos in Malaysia – Gelogob, Puntung, Tam and Iman – are still alive)

The beginnings of a “frozen zoo” of wildlife genomes. Malaysia’s most skilled specialists in wildlife anaesthesia and handling of animal gametes for in vitro fertilization and cryopreservation

The potential to expand work to other critically endangered wildlife species including Malayan tiger and two critically endangered wild cattle species

If BORA stays open it has the opportunity to apply experience gained from the Hairy rhino story. Here are some thoughts and lessons learned which we want to share:

Rare wildlife species other than Hairy rhino are going to suffer the same fate – it is just a matter of time

We can do something before it is too late

Doing the same thing again and again will not be enough

Let us learn specific lessons from the Hairy rhino story

BORA will be re-branding by the end of 2020 to offer suggestions and resources that will help to implement these lessons learned.

Dec 05 2019

Bora: Msia’s efforts to save Sumatran rhino thwarted by apathetic parties

By Avila Geraldine NST Online, November 24, 2019 KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia has done its level best to save the Sumatran rhinoceros since the 1980s, including mooting breeding programmes and pursuing conservation collaborations with key parties – all to no avail.

Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) executive director Dr John Payne told the New Straits Times that many opportunities to save the species had been rejected by “people in positions of authority.”

“Starting with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) experts in 1984, who argued that only non-breeding Sumatran rhinos should be brought into a global managed breeding programme,” he said today.

The IUCN is the world’s main authority on the species’ conservation. Payne observed that the same indifferent attitude prevails today.

“I am particularly disappointed that a letter of intent for collaboration signed by key parties in 2012 has been ignored by all parties, except the government of Malaysia and Sabah as well as Bora, despite our numerous repeated attempts to engage,” he said.

In August this year, Deputy Chief Minister cum state Tourism, Culture, and Environment Minister Datuk Christina Liew led a Sabah delegation to Jakarta to discuss a Malaysia-Indonesia rhino conservation collaboration.

Payne was part of the delegation, along with Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga and WWF-Malaysia conservation director Dr Henry Chan.

The meeting with Indonesia is said to have borne fruit with the proposed collaboration expected to be inked in September. But the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is still pending.

Prior to the Jakarta visit, the Sabah government initiated continuous efforts to push for collaboration with the neighbouring country.

“I do not want to add to the toxic Indonesia versus Malaysia (debate), but I do want to say that Malaysia is now far ahead of Indonesia in many aspects of Sumatran rhino conservation. The long-awaited MoU is now needed more than ever,” stressed Payne.

“Malaysia and our colleagues in Germany, Italy and the IPB (Institut Pertanian Bogor) University have much to offer, not least in management of female Sumatran rhinos with reproductive pathology, safe harvesting of gametes from living rhinos, and cell culture, as well as capture and translocation of Sumatran rhinos from remote areas,” he added.

Payne noted that Malaysia’s three female captive Sumatran rhinos – Iman, Puntung, and Gelobog – and male captive rhino Tam all live on as cell cultures.

“Technology already exists to make eggs and sperm from these cultures. Technology to allow embryos of one species to be successfully implanted into the womb of another will be with us in the not too distant future.

“But then, the need for this could have been avoided if the decision makers all decided to collaborate from the 1980s,” he added.

Yesterday, Malaysia’s last Sumatran rhino, Iman, died at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Lahad Datu.

Iman was the last wild rhino spotted deep in the jungles of Sabah in 2014. She was captured at Danum Valley and was taken to the rhino sanctuary for care until she died.

Puntung was captured in 2011 and euthanised in June 2017.

Tam was captured in Aug 2010 and died in May 2019. His body was preserved and is on display at the Sabah state museum.

Gelogob was captured in 1994 and died in 2014. She was the longest-living female rhino in captivity.

Sumatran rhinos in captivity, as listed by Bernama:

1987 – Linbar, male, was captured in Lower Segama, but died of internal injuries that same year.

1987 – Tenegang, male, was captured, but died at the Sepilok Rhino Breeding Centre in 1992.

1988 – Lokan, male, was captured, but eventually died in a pit trap that same year.

1989 – Lun Parai, female, was captured and successfully mated, but no pregnancy occurred. She died in Sepilok in 2000.

1991 – Tekala, male, was captured, but died following a tetanus infection in Sepilok in 1997.

1992 – Sidom, male, was captured, but died in Sepilok in 1997 with no success in mating.

1993 – Bulud, male, was captured and retained at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Lahad Datu but escaped not long after. However, he was sighted once in 1995 not far from Tabin.

1993 – Tanjung, male, was captured and retained in Sepilok, but died after a tree branch fell on it in 2006.

1995 – Malbumi, male, was captured, but died in Sepilok in 1997.

Dec 05 2019

‘So many missed chances to save rhinos’

Daily Express 27 Nov 2019 KOTA KINABALU: Former WWF Sabah Director Datuk John Payne (pic) said there were many missed opportunities to save the Sumatran rhino. Sabah’s last known Sumatran rhino, Iman, died last Saturday and questions were raised as to how the beast that managed to survive for millions of years in Sabah’s primeval forests was allowed to become extinct.“In 1980 IUCN experts discouraged Sabah from capture of rhino because it was considered too risky,” Payne said.

“They advised that only ‘doomed Sumatran rhinos, that is, the old, sick and isolated rhinos be captured for globally managed population breeding programme,” he said, adding that a proposal by the late Tom Foose of American Association of Zoos and Aquariums to initiate advanced reproductive technology for the species was also ignored. The idea was to send a Sabah rhino to America for captive breeding – everything thing was signed and agreed under the Berjaya Government but hue and cry followed a change of government (PBS) and the whole so-called Borneo Project was scuttled. With Sabah rebuffing the idea, Foose approached Indonesia and arrangements with Cincinnati Zoo under Dr Terry managed to sire two male rhino plus a third in Indonesia itself.

“In 2000, a warning by Nan Schaffer that over 70pc of female Sumatran rhinos have reproductive pathology was again ignored and later dubbed by the International Rhino Foundation as a Malaysian problem,” Payne said. Then in March 2012, a letter of intent for collaboration signed in the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry but was ignored until this day. “Between 2013 and 2019, repeated offer from Malaysia including sending Tam and eggs from Iman and Puntung were met with no response from Indonesia,” he said. He said in 2005, female Rosa, captured in Sumatra and never bred now has lelomyoma like Iman but there were no attempts to harvest her eggs or try IVF or artificial insemination. It is a pity that only hesitant and basic attempts at any aspect of advanced reproductive technology had occurred. “Again in November 2018, female Pahu was captured in East Kalimantan but until now there is no action to make use of her genome towards saving the species ,” Payne said.

Read the Daily Express article here

Nov 14 2019

Urgent appraisal needed of Sumatran rhino conservation efforts

This Letter to the Editor appears in Pachyderm: Journal of the African Elephant, African Rhino and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups (Issue 60): June 2018-June 2019.

Dear Chair/Editor, This letter represents the views of Borneo Rhino Alliance, a not-for-profit company dedicated to taking all necessary steps to prevent the extinction of the genus Dicerorhinus, and does not necessarily reflect the views of any other party. The authors have about one hundred years of experience in detection, surveys, capture, translocation and husbandry of Sumatran rhinos, between them. Furthermore we invite urgent debate on this issue for the purpose of securing the Sumatran rhino.

The most ancient surviving rhinoceros genus is Dicerorhinus, represented by a species commonly known as the Sumatran rhinoceros. A glance through the sparse literature on Sumatran rhino from the 1930s to 1970s clearly shows that the species was by that time in deep trouble: very few animals, widely scattered in separate forest blocks in four or five nations, generally with fewer than ten or so individuals in any one place. A prior millennium or more of hunting to supply horns for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was the main reason for this accelerating decline. Clearly, the problem to be addressed by the 1980s was not of excessive mortality, which had already happened, but of the Allee effect: very low Sumatran rhino population density everywhere, very few rhinos, and not enough breeding to reverse the trajectory towards extinction.

The answer should have been obvious: launch a single programme of captive breeding in managed, fenced facilities to increase population density of fertile adults, boost birth rate and address the inevitable inbreeding depression developing in each isolated cluster. Similar concepts had worked for the white rhino in South Africa, for both species of bison and for the musk-ox, many decades earlier. But what should have been obvious was not to be. Only a few people wrote about the situation clearly, notably Tom Foose, Conservation Coordinator of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums from 1981 to 1990.

1981 marked not only the beginning of Foose’s prescient tenure, but also the beginning of the era of ”sustainable development”, when erosion of the profession of wildlife management began, in favour of justifying wildlife conservation in terms of human benefit and, paradoxically, a more emotional approach to wildlife. Surely, in 2019, we cannot continue to believe that small pockets of forest in protected areas, typically marginal for large mammals in terms of soil fertility, steep terrain and access to limiting resources, will be adequate to sustain tiny, unmanaged wild large mammal populations in the long term in the absence of specific human interventions? The late twentieth century also marked the beginning of the stakeholder consultation approach to wildlife management, which may work in some circumstances but can also lead to indecision or ineffective compromise. Most importantly now, the Sumatran rhino may be doomed by lack of leadership, and the accompanying need to make hard decisions, as well as the continuing failure to understand that the paramount need is to boost birth numbers.

To one of us (JP), having surveyed Sabah, the northern tenth of the island of Borneo for Sumatran rhinos from 1979 to 1983, as a WWF-Malaysia staff member in collaboration with Sabah Forestry Department, it was very clear that the species would soon be extinct. Foose visited Sabah in 1983, and the government at that time was warm to collaboration within the context of an international capture and meta-population management programme. It was our hope in 1984 that a single programme to boost Sumatran rhino births, prioritising capture of wild rhinos for ex situ management, would be realised.

The fate of Dicerorhinus was sealed on 4 October 1984, however, when a compromise was reached among 20 of the world’s designated Sumatran rhino experts. At an IUCN-brokered meeting in Singapore on Sumatran rhino at which John Payne was participating, Robert Scott, the then executive director of the Species Survival Commission and meeting facilitator valiantly and diplomatically did his best to reach a strong conclusion. Unfortunately, among the 20 persons present, there was a body of opinion, led vociferously by Professor Rudolf Schenkel, that all Sumatran rhinos should stay put in the wild.

The compromise reached was that where rhinos were in protected areas, or anywhere showing signs of breeding, they should be left alone, and only “doomed” rhinos would be captured for ex situ breeding purposes. The fatal flaw in this compromise became apparent in 2000, when Nan Schaffer of SOS Rhino pointed out that at least 70% of the 23 females captured between 1984 and 1994 (11 in Sumatra, 10 in Malaya and two in Borneo) suffered from reproductive tract pathologies at or soon after the time of capture, a feature that prevented or hindered pregnancy. The subsequent scattering of captured rhinos between facilities in five barely-collaborating regions added to the inevitable failure of this programme.

It is essential to understand that this first captive breeding programme failed because of a fatal constraint in the criteria for capture (namely selection of old, infertile and sub-fertile breeding stock), coupled with multiple weaknesses in execution, and not because the original concept was wrong.

The imperative to persist with a managed meta-population approach was dealt a major blow by the late Alan Rabinowitz in his 1995 essay Helping a species go extinct: the Sumatran rhino in Borneo. Despite having participated with the authors in a survey for rhinos in Danum Valley, Sabah, in September 1992, and concluding that only four to seven rhinos remained at that time, Rabinowitz persisted in the view that leaving the rhinos in situ was the best way forward.

By 2011, all except four of the forty Sumatran rhinos captured in the 1984-1994 IUCN-brokered programme were dead and only the young, compatible pair of Sumatran rhinos in Cincinnati Zoo had fulfilled Tom Foose’s dream. In 2011, two things were initiated in Sabah. Backed by Sabah government
policy and funded by Sime Darby Foundation, Professor Thomas Hildebrandt and a team from Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, commenced in earnest, a programme to focus on use of
advanced reproductive technology to make Sumatran rhino embryos. This was initiated because it was clear that there would never be enough fertile Sumatran rhinos in captivity to be able to rely on natural breeding to save the genus. In 2011, too, the government of Sabah initiated contact with the Ministry of Forestry, Indonesia to collaborate on a programme for Sumatran rhino breeding.

On 15 March 2012, a Letter of Intent for Collaboration on Ensuring the Survival of the Sumatran Rhinoceros was signed in the office of the Director-General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (Indonesia), by the Indonesian and Sabah authorities, the IUCN/SSC Asian Rhino Specialist Group and others. The objectives were: to “collaborate .. and endeavour to acquire additional fertile rhinos of both sexes from the wild for our managed breeding programme .. and share biological materials (including sperm and embryos) .. and share information, in particular concerning husbandry and reproduction ..”. This worthy intent still needs to materialise.

In November 2012, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam visited key people in Indonesia with the intention to drum up support for the intended Indonesia-Malaysia collaboration on the species. For several years, however, Indonesia seems reluctant to talk with Sabah directly, thinking incorrectly that the national government of Malaysia has policy-making authority over Sumatran rhinos in Sabah.

In April 2013, a three-day Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit was held, initiated by Borneo Rhino Alliance, taken up by IUCN, and hosted by Wildlife Reserves of Singapore. Perhaps inevitably, there was much divergence in the views of the 100 people present, and the summit ended with expensive plans to “conduct more surveys” instead of the necessary immediate initiation of capture of fertile Sumatran rhinos for breeding. In October 2013, the first Asian Rhino Range States meeting was held in Indonesia involving Governments of Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal, under purview of IUCN, with the five Asian rhino range states committing to managing all the Asian rhino species to achieve at least 3% annual population growth rate through implementation of the actions outlined in the meeting’s Declaration. In February 2019, the second Asian Rhino Range Countries Meeting was held in India. Malaysia’s request to insert into the final Declaration the possibility to “pursue the application of advanced reproductive technology to make best use of infertile and sub–fertile Sumatran rhinos” was rejected in favour of rather bland wording that allows conservative elements involved in the species to do nothing new.

On 24 August 2014, Indonesia proposed that Sabah provide its sole male rhino, Tam, to Indonesia. The request was agreed to within 10 days, but then Indonesia backed down, seemingly shocked that Sabah had
responded so positively. The problem of Indonesia requiring engagement with the national government of Malaysia seemed to have been solved on 4 June 2015, when the National Biodiversity Council of Malaysia endorsed a proposal from Sabah. The proposal was to use advanced reproductive technology to help prevent the extinction of the Sumatran rhino, and that Malaysia should invite Indonesia to collaborate on Sumatran rhino conservation work. Since then, a consistently supportive national Ministry in Malaysia, right up to today, has done its best to attract interest in collaboration to save the genus. But all approaches from Malaysia have been stalled by Indonesia, both at governmental and NGO levels. An increasingly outdated Memorandum of Understanding, initiated in 2012, has yet to be finalised and signed at the time of writing this paper.

Collaboration does not necessarily have to be on the application of reproductive technology but can be on topics as diverse as sharing experience on safe capture, translocation by helicopter from remote areas, husbandry, treatment of reproductive tract pathologies, anaesthesia and so on.

Of the last four Sumatran rhinos captured in Sabah (female Gelogob in 1994, male Tam in 2008, female Puntung in 2011 and female Iman in 2014) two females and the male have died, leaving only Iman alive today. Puntung was euthanized in 2017 due to the pain she was suffering from squamous cell carcinoma. Tam died on 27 May 2019 of the effects of end stage renal failure. Both deaths drew widespread sympathy and comment both on social media and on supposedly reliable news feeds. The sympathy is touching to those close to the rhinos, but all the reporting from outside Malaysia demonstrates well the shifting baseline syndrome. There is a universal lack of understanding that the species’ current situation is the end stage of thousands of years of history and that extinction will be prevented only by decisive human intervention. Most of these recent authors continue to refer to poaching and habitat loss, unaware that it is not simply the overall small rhino numbers that has been the threat to the species for the past century, but instead the very thin scattering of individuals on the ground and the accompanying tendency for female reproductive pathologies.

Potentially good news is that the living genomes of all four of the last Malaysia–born Sumatran rhinos are sustained in cell cultures. At some time in the future, when the technology and politics are right, gametes can
be made from these cell lines. But surrogate mothers will be needed for emplacement of the embryos. This is where Indonesia’s role is critical, but there has been no real commitment from government, and specialist
rhino NGOs alike on the dire need to secure and manage the last few wild fertile females as the primary means to maximise rhino births.

Throughout the year 2018 up to now, BORA has waited for the signal from Indonesia to arrange from the Malaysia side the sending of oocytes from Iman for in vitro embryo production attempts using sperm from Andalas (the proven fertile bull rhino at Way Kambas). This procedure can be performed by Indonesian specialists in the Bogor Agricultural Institute in Indonesia. The Government of Indonesia seems to be under the false impression that, because Iman is periodically sick with her leiomyoma tumours, she has stopped producing eggs. Among the impediments that have been applied are the need to ensure that the provisions of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing are fulfilled and the non-issuance of a CITES import permit.

A strong and pervasive spirit of patriotism pervades all elements of Sumatran rhino work. It is difficult to know what a Malaysia-based NGO can usefully say at this juncture to dispel this insidious threat to action on Sumatran rhino. Millions of dollars have gone into Indonesia in recent years, with the only obvious result being two female Sumatran rhinos captured, one dead, the other unsuitable for reproduction. Apart from generous but small donations from individuals, almost all funding of Sumatran rhino work in Malaysia over the past decade has come from Malaysian sources. A Malaysian team and a German team respectively have
offered to harvest sperm and oocytes from Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia (both having done this successfully in Sabah); but approval has not been forthcoming.

Those in Sabah are disappointed that the Sumatran rhino rescue programme launched in September 2018 by National Geographic together with IUCN, WWF, International Rhino Foundation and Global Wildlife Conservation, focuses exclusively on the Indonesian populations, rather than the Sumatran rhino as a genus.

If the government of Indonesia, for whatever reason, does not want collaboration with citizens of Malaysia or Germany, we urge the authorities and their donors to implement the necessary urgent and over-due measures within Indonesia. In other words, forget about Malaysia and do what needs to be done independently.

At some time in the very near future a point will be reached when the sheer technical and logistical inability to capture and translocate the last rhinos from remote sites, coupled with the reproductive condition of all those remaining rhinos still able to mate, and bureaucracy amongst the indecisive decision-makers, will together conspire to condemn the 20 million year old genus Dicerorhinus to inevitable extinction. The precise week on which that will happen will, of course, forever remain unknown. Perhaps it has already occurred, but we must either assume not, or stop all further wastage of funds on the genus.

BORA entreats the conservation body that what is needed now (and what has been needed since the 1970s) is: (1) high level leadership, which has to come from within Indonesia, (2) one meta–population programme, (3) one team of competent and dedicated people, led by a capable implementation leader, (4) capture of as many Sumatran rhinos possible, while there is still time to do so, immediately, and consistently prioritising capture of fertile (not old or infertile) individuals, (5) minimise the birthing interval of all captive females that are not reproductively compromised, (6) ensure that every remaining Sumatran rhino, including the reproductively compromised individuals,—contributes its gametes towards making embryos through the application of assisted reproductive technology.

And, equally important, it is important to dispense with time and money wasting distractions that are not needed, including (1) “surveys”, (2) superfluous staff with no experience and overly-specific tasks, (3)
excessive camera trapping, which cannot tell a rhino’s reproductive status and is not necessary to decide where to place traps, (4) “awareness” and (5) “stakeholder consultation”. These needs are not impossible to achieve. But they are impossible within the current scenario. The alarm bells are ringing, we should all be awake and move forward.

John Payne (JP)*, Abdul Hamid Ahmad and Zainal Zahari Zainuddin
Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA)
*corresponding author: sabahpayne@gmail.com

Sep 01 2019

Comment: Beyond habitat loss and poaching

by John Payne

Humans are susceptible to the shifting baseline syndrome. We imagine that what we see from our childhood up to today is what is normal … what has been so for a long time, and what will be so for the foreseeable future. This view can be more dangerous to wildlife than poaching and habitat loss. It is a view that can lead to preventable extinctions, through faulty analysis and wrong actions to remedy the problem. What we see now is a small and essentially random snapshot of the panoply of history from, say, 20 million years ago to 100 years from now. For poor old Dicerorhinus (the Sumatran rhinoceros), a fifty year period of no decisions and wrong decisions is the problem.

In reality, Dicerorhinus is the Asian rhinoceros. Only 5,000 years ago, the species was present throughout Southeast Asia including what is now central China. Rhinos are not equatorial rainforest specialists. In fact, equatorial rainforest is probably a poor habitat for Dicerorhinus: poor quality and sparse food, leached soils depleted in minerals, and too hot and humid for a bulky, large mammal to be comfortable. It has ended up in these marginal habitats at the very southern end of its range, in Sumatra and Borneo, from about 1,000 years ago, through various historical sequences of events, not least the 100 meter rise in sea level between 18,000 to 7,000 years ago, and the 2,000 year old madness of the Chinese belief that rhino horn has medicinal properties.

A glance through the sparse literature on Sumatran rhino from the 1930s to 1970s clearly shows that the species was by that time in deep trouble: very few individuals, widely scattered in separate forest blocks in four or five nations, generally with fewer than ten or so individuals in any one place. A prior millennium or more of hunting to supply horns for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was the main reason for this accelerating decline. Clearly, the problem to be addressed by the 1980s was not of excessive mortality, which had already happened, but of the Allee effect: very low Sumatran rhino population density everywhere, very few rhinos, and not enough breeding to reverse the trajectory towards extinction. The answer should have been obvious: launch a single programme of captive breeding in managed, fenced facilities to increase population density of fertile adults, boost birth rate and address the inevitable inbreeding depression developing in each isolated cluster. Similar concepts had worked for the white rhino in South Africa, for both species of bison and for the musk-ox, many decades earlier. But what should have been obvious was not to be. Only a few people wrote about the situation clearly, notably Tom Foose, Conservation Coordinator of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums from 1981 to 1990.

The fate of Dicerorhinus was sealed on 4 October 1984, when a compromise was reached among 20 of the world’s then designated Sumatran rhino experts and government representatives from Indonesia, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah. At an IUCN-brokered meeting in Singapore on Sumatran rhino, the executive director of the Species Survival Commission and meeting facilitator valiantly and diplomatically did his best to reach a strong conclusion. Unfortunately, among the 20 persons present, there was a body of opinion, led vociferously by two elderly European professors, that all Sumatran rhinos should stay put in the wild. The compromise reached was that where rhinos were in protected areas, or anywhere showing signs of breeding, they should be left alone, and only “doomed” rhinos would be captured for ex situ breeding purposes.

The fatal flaw in this compromise became apparent in 2000, when Nan Schaffer of SOS Rhino pointed out that at least 70% of the 23 females captured between 1984 and 1994 (11 in Sumatra, 10 in Malaya and 2 in Borneo) suffered from reproductive tract pathologies at or soon after time of capture, a feature that prevented or hindered pregnancy. The subsequent scattering of captured rhinos between facilities in five barely-collaborating regions added to the inevitable failure of this programme. It is essential to understand that this first captive breeding programme failed because of a fatal constraint in the criteria for capture (namely selection of old, infertile and sub-fertile breeding stock), coupled with multiple weaknesses in execution, and not because the original concept was wrong.

Fast forward to 2019 and we see “new” ideas and new people. In fact, the “new” ideas are a replay of the early 1980s. Many of the people involved in Sumatran rhinos now, including high profile people in positions of directing policy, seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of 35 years ago.

I quote here from the minutes of the 4 October 1984 meeting, the words of the late Tom Foose : “Zoos in North America and Europe have experience and expertise in the management and breeding of three Rhinoceros species, Indian, White, and Black Rhino. They have active research programs on exotic species in reproductive technology including artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and cryopreservation. Transfer of this technology is possible but will take time”.

Wise words, ignored by the 1984 decision-makers. Then, there were several hundreds of Sumatran rhinos alive in the world, many obviously fertile breeding animals, some in sites easy to carry out captures. Now, there are fewer than 50 Sumatran rhinos, with perhaps about five or so breeding females left alive. And a new generation of advisers who seem frozen to a standstill.

Sumatran rhino has been ill-served, right up to today, by people in key positions, who not only lack knowledge and understanding, but have jostled to suppress those who do, and prevented a single targeted leadership role to allow for a genus recovery programme.

So, do we give up?

No. Our lessons (ignored so many times) are the white rhino (paradoxically, close to extinction in 1890 but much safer now, despite noise to the contrary), the European bison (down to 27 individuals in 1927, bred from 12 animals) and the team led by Thomas Hildebrandt and Cesare Galli (the people kept out of Indonesia by the International Rhino Foundation), who in June 2019, transferred a test tube white rhino embryo into a female whose eggs were fertilized in vitro.

The array of “protected areas” that the Earth will end up with a few decades from now, due to a surfeit of Homo sapiens, are TOO FEW, TOO SMALL, TOO SCATTERED, AND OF MARGINAL SUITABILITY for almost all endangered species. Whether we like it or not, some endangered species will be saved from extinction only if private land owners play a role, in allocating space and resources to help sustain breeding of those species, so that the fate of the Sumatran rhino is not played out again and again. Who are the private land owners? They can be anyone. But three stand out in the context of Malaysia and Indonesia : oil palm plantations, industrial wood plantations and zoos.

We also need always to remember : wildlife will survive only if we can imagine how populations can be sustained and, if necessary, actively managed in the long term. Wild animal welfare programmes are noble and needed, but are usually marginal and rarely relevant to a species population conservation programme.

The overall lesson that needs to be learned from the fiasco of the Sumatran rhino is : the need for thinking by experienced practitioners, to convince governments to put in place rational, long-term, big picture species-specific programmes designed save other endangered species.

Beginning the paradigm shift

The first thing to do is to acknowledge and embrace the idea that, while traditional “protected areas” (such as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries) are essential to conserving wild species, they will never be sufficient to save all species from extinction. In much of the “western” world, due primarily to a long history of forest loss and allocation of land to private interests, privately-owned lands play a key role in nature conservation. But this scenario tends not to apply in the equatorial regions, where tropical rainforests are most prominent. Both Malaysia and Indonesia have a tradition (from the colonial era) of separating (on the one hand) forests, biodiversity, protected areas and government as one conceptual clump, and (on the other hand) business, corporations, land titles, leases, plantations, and private enterprise as a different clump. There is also, of course, a third clump, of indigenous people and rural communities, but we will leave these out of the discussion here.

To save as much biodiversity as possible, the second clump has to play a role. While many, probably most, rainforest species of plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms need forest as their habitat, there are some that do not. Those that do not include rare large animal species. These are the ones with which to start. The most significant way in which land-owners and lease-holders other than governments, therefore, can play a role is to allocate portions of their land to conservation. If thought out carefully and practically, even small portions of titled or leased land can have disproportionately huge positive impacts of saving rare species. The days of automatically moving all wild animals out of plantations, of getting governments and NGOs to do the work at other peoples’ expense, and giving donations to NGOs to perform “projects” that have no long-term purpose, are numbered. And the number of those days should not be large.

One of the pioneers in this new paradigm is PONGO Alliance (www.pongoalliance.org), a partnership of visionary oil palm growers and conservation practitioners, which aims to assist oil palm growers to achieve their mandated sustainability goals by “making resilient landscapes for wildlife and people a reality”.

The initial ground engagement of this new initiative is in the lower Kinabatangan region of eastern Sabah, Malaysia. Here, PONGO Alliance aims to restore a much-depleted wild orangutan population (formerly around 8,000, now around 800 individuals). The region has about 42,000 ha of protected but highly fragmented forests. Much of the rest of the area was converted to oil palm monoculture 20-40 years ago and many estates are now undergoing second planting. The current orangutan population is at a critically tipping point such that without oil palm industry cooperation, viability of this critically endangered and fully protected species in the wild is not assured in the long term.

Female orangutans live in communities of related females and are intolerant of unrelated females, so simply relocating a female from her current location elsewhere is not a definite solution. Because females have been preferentially lost during land conversion, any remaining female still residing on her ancestral land is of critical genetic value to the species. Males require access across agricultural landscapes between now fragmented protected forests and any remaining natural forests on private lands.

To best serve both an industry and a species that is too often misrepresented by incendiary and polarising special interest groups, PONGO Alliance engages industry with a holistic, and non-judgemental approach on an individual basis, company by company and even estate by estate.

By working together, PONGO Alliance aims to arrive at creative and collaborative solutions to create a paradigm shift in agricultural practice that reframes the oil palm industry as one that supports rather than destroys orangutan habitat.

With ongoing implementation of Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) and Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards in Sabah, the time is right to help support orangutans to survive and breed in the mixed oil palm and forest landscape. Land along rivers, on steep slopes and non-productive swamps can be used to increase orangutan habitat within plantations. This is done by planting the most important orangutan food plants, either under old oil palms that are not intended for replanting, or on cleared land. There are many plants favoured by orangutans as food, but two sorts stand out as of great significance: Figs and lianas. Lianas, particularly those of the legume family, supply a big proportion of the protein requirements of wild orangutans, which feed on their shoots, leaves, bark and fruits.

The magic of ficus

The most fundamental biological requirement of all animals is food and water. In the context of Malaysia and Indonesia, we could imagine under a different array of historical and current human attitudes that Sumatran rhinos could live in oil palm plantations, feeding on woody weeds, with wild cattle feeding on the grasses, together avoiding the need for herbicides. That is unlikely to happen now, but we can imagine other scenarios where plantations can play a role in conserving other rare wildlife species.

One of the most interesting plant genera in Borneo is Ficus. Commonly known as fig in English, ara in Malay and Indonesian, and nunuk in Sabah, there are over 150 species in Borneo, including tall trees, small trees, stranglers (hemiepiphytes if you are a botanist), epiphytes and climbers. A fig “fruit” is actually an arrangement of many small flowers within a receptacle, known as a syconium, but for convenience we call them fruit. Ficus is “keystone”, meaning a genus that has a disproportionately large effect on the functioning of its natural environment relative to its abundance. The main importance of Ficus lies in the fact that in any one area, there are almost always a few or many Ficus plants bearing fruits, and the fruits are eaten by many mammal and bird species. The young leaves are also eaten by some wildlife, including orangutans.

Borneo Rhino Alliance started planting Ficus in 2012, as a means to supply leaves to the rhinos, which favour Ficus leaves as food over many other kinds of plants. At that time, it was imagined that there would be several rhinos living in the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary facilities in Tabin Wildlife Reserve. Sadly, that was not to be. There were probably only four or five rhinos still alive in Sabah at that time, and three were already in captivity at Tabin. Now, BORA has living, planted Ficus of over 30 species on land occupied by the rhino food garden and old rhino facilities.

A significant feature of Ficus is that planting materials can be propagated vegetatively, without the need to wait for, harvest and plant seeds. Vegetative propagation is simpler and quicker than production of seedlings from seeds. Two vegetative propagation methods can be used : marcots (also known as air layering) and cuttings with application of rooting hormone. If marcots or cuttings are taken from mature fig plants and planted out as if they are seedlings, fruiting will occur much sooner in the planted-out marcot or cutting.

Trials are ongoing to seek optimum details of propagation methods, as well as requirements of the various species, and matching of species to sites.

What BORA offers

BORA can supply marcots or cuttings of many of the species now being grown in Tabin, each ready for planting, in a soil-compost matrix in black plastic bags. Orders should be placed in advance. Prices range from RM20 to RM50 per plant, depending on species (some are more difficult to propagate than others) and size. Sales come with advice, if needed, on optimum planting and maintenance methods.

BORA also offers short, customised courses on how to produce marcots.

Planting ficus marcots onto old oil palm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CONTACTS

BORA thanks Quentin Phillipps for his outstanding contribution to Ficus identification in the field (https://borneoficus.info/) and for supporting us via the Borneo Fig Project; and PONGO Alliance for providing the impetus to pursue development of the nursery at Tabin Wildlife Reserve, with an emphasis on Ficus and vegetative propagation.

Contact : John Payne (sabahpayne@gmail.com) or Dr Zainal Zahari Zainuddin (zainalz.bora@gmail.com)