Story behind extinction of Sabah rhinos
Published on: Sunday, October 23, 2022
By: Datuk Dr John Payne
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Datuk Dr John Payne with Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Jafry Ariffin at the book launch. At right is Deputy Director of Sabah Wildlife Department.
This was after years of effort to protect the species in the wild and following decades-long efforts to form a captive breeding programme.
I am fortunate to have quite a long background involvement with this rhino species, starting in the 1970s, in both Malaysia and Indonesia.
I spent much time between 1980 and 1986 surveying for the species in eastern Sabah.
The book outlines many aspects of this rhino.
Today I choose just a few points that I feel are most significant.
The real reasons
So why did this rhino species go extinct in Malaysia?
Let me tell you upfront, the extinction has little to do with habitat loss or poaching.
All the habitat loss and hunting that affected this species in any significant way had already happened by a century ago, 1922.
The real reasons are all to do with the way in which the human mind operates, and the ways in which nature conservation institutions are arranged.
Let me start with the question: why do I call this species of rhino, and this book, the Hairy rhinoceros, rather than the more conventional name of Sumatran rhino. Other than the obvious fact that this is the hairiest living rhino species.
The ‘shifting baseline syndrome’
It is because we humans suffer from a phenomenon called shifting baseline syndrome (inability to perceive change over time, underestimate how much has changed).
This means (and I quote), “In the absence of personal experience of historical conditions, people of each new generation accept the situation in which they were raised as being normal”.
If we had been around five thousand years ago, we would know the Hairy rhino as the Asian rhino, the species that was distributed all the way from what are now Bangladesh and southern China, in many habitat types, throughout Southeast Asia, to Borneo.
If the species had been given an English name thousands of years ago, it would likely be called the Chinese rhino.
But the first specimen of the species brought to Europe happened to have been shot in Sumatra, and was eventually named in 1814 as Rhinoceros sumatrensis.
By that time, the biggest remaining Hairy rhino population was indeed in the evergreen rainforests of Sumatra.
(The Sumatran or hairy rhino was once widespread across the Asian continent – from India to as far north Inner Mongolia, China, Myanmar etc, and as global temperatures took a sharp drop during the late Miocene epoch (5 to 7 million years ago), Asian continent and Borneo were connected, the rhinos migrated over but when the Ice Age receded Borneo became a huge island so the rhinos that reached Borneo earlier stayed as a rainforest species, at least one geologist, Hans P. Hazebroek thinks that how the Sumatran rhinos got here as a Bornean inhabitant – ED ).
Medicine not the original purpose of rhino hunting
Why did the Chinese human population hunt Hairy rhinos?
The original purpose does not seem to be medicinal.
The main period of slaughter started some 3,068 years ago, from the Zhou Dynasty (1,046-256BC) onwards and during the three centuries-long Warring States between 481-223BC, the southern Chu State was renowned for its rhino hide armour, reportedly as hard as metal or stone.
The rhino skin was used for making body armour.
At any one time there would have been tens of thousands of standing troops.
Use of the horn as the most sought- after product from rhinos, I suspect came later, perhaps as a medicinal supplement business.
As traders from China expanded into the Bornean and Sumatran regions some 1,000 years ago, rhino horn was a mutually ideal item for both sellers and buyers.
For the native hunters, the Hairy rhino was the easiest large animal to hunt.
It is solitary and dozes daily in a mud wallow during the hot midday hours, where it can be easily killed without the need for projectile weapons.
Rhino horn was an ideal trade item.
A sackful can be carried over long distances, and then kept for years without decay, and tiny amounts could be sold for very high prices
The main point: No recovery programme for ‘a walking dead’
But I digress.
My main point here is: the entire world population of Hairy rhinos had been almost wiped out by the 1920s, leaving a few scattered remnants in evergreen rainforests.
It was already a “walking dead” species by 1922.
The only way forward, if anyone wanted to prevent its extinction at that time, would have been to initiate a recovery programme by bringing the last clusters of rhinos into managed facilities.
But no such programme was initiated.
Free from meddling, Small groups of individuals saved wild bison from the brink
However, the idea of captive breeding of critically endangered large wild herbivorous mammals was implemented successfully starting a century ago with the European bison and Przewalski’s horse – both of these wild species were down to a few tens of individuals by 1922.
The European bison was down to fewer than 30 individuals, all in zoos, when the wild one was shot in 1927.
Now, both of those species – bison and wild horse - number in the thousands, with many in the wild. How did that happen?
Both species were saved from extinction by small groups of self-organising people from several nations, including land owners, zoo managers and passionate individuals.
They got together and collaborated to ensure that the last remaining animals reproduced in managed, fenced facilities.
There was no meddling from either governments or international institutions or civil society.
The irony – risk-aversed conservation powers hinder small groups’ work to prevent rhino extinction
Today, left to the prevailing conservation power structures, the European bison and Przewalski’s horse would go extinct.
Not only the division of the world into competing nation states, and government rules, but international agreements such as CITES, risk avoidance in big institutions, excessive stakeholder consultation and social media lunacy would stop those passionate people from acting, until such time as the last animal died.
If you think that is too harsh, the Hairy rhino story is the proof.
The book tells the story in some detail.
After the mid-20th century, the institutional framework of nature conservation has made it very difficult for small groups of self-organising people to work on targeted programmes to prevent extinctions.
Instead, we are boxed into risk-free efforts such as awareness-raising, monitoring, camera-trapping, research projects and protection teams.
When efforts to prevent rhino extinction became less likely under international institutions, collaboration
As the years go on, through bureaucracy and risk avoidance, it becomes ever less likely that international institutions and international collaboration can serve to prevent extinctions.
Female rhino Gelogob died in 2014.
In happier days: Male rhino, Tam (right), died in 2008 while Puntung (left) died in 2017.
Female rhino Iman – Sabah’s last rhino – died on November 23, 2019.
‘The Hairy Rhinoceros’ launched on September 22.
A better bet is to do everything within one nation, and for the authorities to delegate the work to small groups of passionate people.
But populations of endangered species typically need to be managed, rather than simply conserved.
The 1984 IUCN meeting saga in Singapore
In October 1984, I was present at a meeting in Singapore convened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, a landmark meeting tasked to decide how to prevent the extinction of the Hairy rhino.
The meeting consisted of 20 people, all except one were men, and I was the youngest in the room, representing WWF Malaysia, and as back-up to the late Patrick Andau, the then head of wildlife for the Government of Sabah.
Sabah was open to any collaborative solution
Two representatives were present from each of Indonesia, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah, along with six from US and UK zoos, three from Singapore Zoo, and miscellaneous others with various expertise.
The most open-minded participant was Sabah, which had a few rhinos, no resources, and being in the middle of an era of massive logging, and opening of forests for cocoa and oil palm plantations, was open to any collaborative solution.
IUCN specialist groups shot down Tom Foose’s proposal for rhino states to manage rhinos as a ‘single population’
Tom Foose, representing the AAZPA, was the most clear-minded of all.
He talked of the need for a metapopulation – meaning to collaboratively manage all remaining Hairy rhinos as a single population, wherever they are.
He recommended applying ongoing advances in assisted reproductive technology to boost birth rate.
This is precisely what was needed.
The BIG problem at that 1984 meeting was that the chairmen of the two IUCN specialist groups, the Asian rhino group and the Captive Breeding group, did not agree. The Asian rhino group chairman insisted that Hairy rhinos evolved as part of the forest ecosystem, and should stay in their ecosystem.
The compromise – capture ‘doomed’ individuals, leave viable clusters in wild
In the end, the only possible compromise was reached.
Individual rhinos which could be considered as “doomed” (that was the word used) and unable to contribute to breeding would be captured, at US and UK zoo expense, while all potentially viable clusters of rhinos would be protected in situ, wild and in the forest.
Sabah pulled out upon change of government
What happened after that?
Cutting a long story short, Sabah pulled out of the international programme following a change in State government in 1985.
Failure to manage rhinos as a ‘single population’ by all parties doomed Sabah’s charismatic animal?
And every cluster of wild Hairy rhinos existing at that time, except one in Aceh, Sumatra, are now functionally or actually extinct.
And why is that?
Not because of poaching or habitat loss. But because, in 1984, there were simply too few fertile rhinos in any one place to be able to reproduce and replace the natural death rate.
And because the rhinos were not managed as a single population by the various parties involved.
What we now know – the double strategic blunder
We now know that, over the past 40 years, over a half of all female Hairy rhinos had reproductive pathology severe enough to prevent successful pregnancy.
This happens if a female rhino does not become pregnant soon after achieving sexual maturity.
The 1984 decision to capture so-called “doomed rhinos” meant that the majority of rhinos subsequently captured could not contribute to reproduction, while most of the fertile rhinos – including those in Danum Valley and Tabin Wildlife Reserve - were left in small, non-viable clusters in the forest, to be monitored to extinction.
Cincinnati’s captivity breeding success with Indon rhinos - Sabah’s lost chance?
It was largely by luck that in the 1990s, Cincinnati Zoo ended up with a fertile pair of Hairy rhinos that had been captured in Sumatra, and that the zoo staff there were interested in reproductive technology. Subsequently there were 3 Hairy rhino births in Cincinnati, in 2001, 2004 and 2007.
Five lessons from the extinction of Sabah’s rhinos
What lessons do we learn from that story? There are several.
1. The chair of the IUCN Asian Rhino Specialist Group in 1984 was an esteemed old white male animal behavioral researcher.
His advice was based purely on his opinion.
I suggest that the lesson is : be aware that people in wildlife conservation organisations, who are not experienced experts in their field may make the wrong policy decisions.
That could happen as a result of lack of relevant experience, or emotions, or groupthink, or receiving bad advice from others.
2. Be wary of decision-making by consensus – that may just serve to terminate the best decision, and set in motion work that wastes decades of time and millions of dollars.
When an insightful outsider say you are wrong – listen
3. If an outsider with key insight says you are wrong, listen!
Dr. Nan Schaffer (the founder of BORA) had already detected the reproductive pathology problem in the 1990s but was ignored by all the mainstream institutions.
4 Don’t think that women are necessarily better than old white men at making good decisions.
The woman CEO of the US-based International Rhino Foundation, which channelled about US$18 million to Indonesia, did not promote Indonesia – Malaysia collaboration over 13 critical years, from 2008-2021, and she regarded reproductive pathology as a “Malaysian problem”.
5. I would not necessarily trust any biologist, young or old, to do any better.
But – crucially - it is not their fault. Let me say this IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Be wary of online reads – find experienced experts on the ground
Do not believe anything you read online. Here are some words that I lifted just yesterday from three key websites. The words refer to the Hairy rhino.
IUCN Red List “The three principal threats are small population effects, human disturbance, and poaching.
WWF-USA website: While surviving in possibly greater numbers than the Javan rhino, Sumatran rhinos are more threatened due to habitat loss and fragmentation.
WWF-UK: Habitat loss due to forest conversion for agriculture and human settlements, and poaching.
To repeat my main point here.
Do not believe anything you read on endangered wildlife on any digital platform.
At best, even if it is true, it will be missing the necessary big picture.
Instead, find at least two independent experts with many years of hands-on experience and talk to them, and then use your thinking ability to evaluate what they say.
The key biological and management lesson from the Hairy Rhino
The key biological and management lesson from the Hairy rhino is this: Knowing the actual numbers of a rare species is not a useful proxy for anything.
Finding the answer to “how many are there?” will be a waste of time and funds.
The danger numbers that warrant human intervention
As a rule of thumb, any species which has fewer than a thousand individuals left alive is approaching dangerously close to zero, and management interventions will be needed.
The demography and fertility of animals living in clusters of fewer than 100 individuals will become too abnormal to permit recovery without human interventions.
The important elements of what needs to be known by a wildlife manager include: where the animals are, how scattered they are, sex ratio, ages, fertility, health, if they have access to enough nutritious food at all times, and whether they can breed.
Tembadau – The next most endangered wild species
Let me give an example of Malaysia’s wild cattle species, the two next most endangered wild species after the Hairy rhino.
Every female tembadau, or Bornean banteng, in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, and every wild female seladang in Perak State, gives birth at an interbirth interval that is approximately three or four times lower than maximum possible.
Dr Zainal, of BORA, has been investigating this phenomenon over many years. The reason is very likely to be nutrition, meaning constant availability of quality foods.
Females need adequate calcium and phosphorus as well as protein and energy to be able to bear pregnancies and produce sufficient milk.
Former Tourism
Minister’s to Indonesia offer ignored
I credit the government of Malaysia, at national level and the government of Sabah, for being consistent all along in the aim to prevent the extinction of the Hairy rhino by all means possible; and for being open to collaboration with external parties, notably Indonesia.
One of the predecessors of the current Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment made it very clear to Indonesia that Sabah was willing to loan our last remaining Hairy rhinos for captive breeding in Indonesia.
The offer was ignored.
Dismal performance from IUCN and relevant mainstream conservation NGOs
But I want to stress also that I do not primarily put responsibility on Indonesia for the lack of collaboration.
Both IUCN and the relevant mainstream conservation NGOs performed dismally over several decades, not only giving out incorrect information again and again, but giving wrong, or no, advice.
Sabah last glimmer of hope – preserved genomes of last four Hairy rhinos
As an addendum before closing, I would like to inform you that the genomes of the last four Hairy rhinos that lived in Sabah – Tam, Iman, Puntung and Gelogob - are preserved in living cell cultures.
Over the past ten years, it has become technically possible to create egg cells and sperms from those cell cultures, which were derived from skin biopsies, taken when the rhinos were still alive, and to make embryos in a laboratory.
Is that of any value?
I don’t know.
The immediate issue is that the only potential surrogate mothers are all in Sumatra where, according to prevailing human psychology, they belong.
Using experimental advanced reproductive technology on any of them would be considered too risky by the decision-makers.
My prediction is that the Hairy rhinoceros will – after 20 million years of existence - go extinct about ten years from now, through the risk aversion attitude of bureaucrats.
I hope I am wrong.
Tributes
In closing, I would like to acknowledge just a few names out of the many who indirectly contributed to this book: to the YB the Minister, for participating today; to Sabah Wildlife Department, for putting trust in Bora over the past 14 years; to the national Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, for the same, and particularly for funding the work on assisted reproductive technology; to former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Musa Hitam and Dr Yatela Zainal Abidin of Yayasan Sime Darby, for their persistent support from 2009; to Dr Edwin Bosi, a Sabahan and one of the first Hairy rhino veterinarians; to Dr Zainal Zahari Zainuddin, another Malaysian pioneering large mammal veterinarian, to whom this book is dedicated; to all the Bora staff who contributed their great dedication over the years; and to the late Herman Stawin, who started his working life digging rhino traps as a teenager and ended – tragically at the age of 46 - as perhaps the most dedicated of all Sabah Wildlife Department staff working on the Hairy rhino.
Thank you.
- Editor’s note: Above report is the entire speech delivered at the launching of the book entitled ‘The Hairy Rhinoceros’ by the book’s author, Datuk Dr. John Payne, on 22 September 2022, at Le Meridien Hotel . Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Jafry Ariffin officially launched the book. The sub-headings are part of our editing work.
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