英语介绍苏门答腊犀牛
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Conservation
Sumatran Rhinoceroses were once quite numerous throughout Southeast Asia. Now only an estimated 300 indivials remain. Though not as rare as the Javan Rhinoceros, the Sumatran Rhinoceros faces greater poaching and habitat pressures and its populations are fragmented and small, whereas a substantial population of Javan Rhinoceros live together on the Ujung Kulon peninsula in Java. While the number of Javan Rhinos in Ujung Kulon has remained relatively stable, Sumatran Rhino populations are believed to be on the decline. It is classed as critically endangered primarily e to illegal poaching and destruction of its rainforest habitat. Most remaining habitat is in inaccessible mountainous areas of Indonesia.[39][40]
Poaching of Sumatran Rhinoceros, though less of a problem than with African Rhinoceros (least in terms of number of animals killed), is cause for concern because dealers are likely speculating that if the species becomes extinct then the price of its horn, estimated as high as $30,000 per kilogram,[7] could dramatically increase. The Sumatran Rhinoceros was never intensively hunted by European hunters. The rhinos are difficult to observe and hunt directly (one field researcher spent seven weeks in a treehide near a salt lick without ever observing a rhino directly), so poachers make use of spear traps and pit traps. In the 1970s, uses of the rhinoceros's body parts among the local people of Sumatra were documented, such as the use of rhino horns in amulets and a folk-belief that the horns offer some protection against poison. Dried rhinoceros meat was used as medicine for diarrhea, leprosy and tuberculosis. "Rhino-oil," a concoction made from leaving a rhino's skull in coconut oil for several weeks, may be used to treat skin diseases. The extent of use and belief in these practices is not known.[24][25][30] It was once believed that rhinoceros horn was widely used as an aphrodisiac; in fact traditional Chinese medicine never used it for this purpose.[7]
The rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, which the Sumatran Rhino inhabits, are also targets for legal and illegal logging because of the desirability of their hardwoods. Rare woods like merbau, meranti and semaram are valuable on the international markets, fetching as much as $1,800 per m3 ($1,375 per cu yd). Enforcement of illegal-logging laws is difficult because humans live within or nearby many of the same forests as the rhino. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake has been used to justify new logging. Although the hardwoods in the rain forests of the Sumatran Rhino are destined for international markets and not widely used in domestic construction, the number of logging permits for these woods has increased dramatically because of the tsunami.[26]
[edit] In captivity
Though rare, Sumatran Rhinoceroses have been occasionally exhibited in zoos for nearly a century and a half. The London Zoo acquired two Sumatran Rhinoceros in 1872. One of these, a female named Begum, was captured in Chittagong in 1868 and survived at the London Zoo until 1900, the record lifetime in captivity for Sumatran Rhinos. At the time of their acquisition, Philip Sclater, the secretary of the Zoological Society of London claimed that the first Sumatran Rhinoceros in zoos had been in the collection of the Zoological Garden of Hamburg since 1868. Before the extinction of the subspecies Dicerorhinus sumatrensis lasiotis, at least seven specimens were held in zoos and circuses.[24] Sumatran Rhinos, however, did not thrive outside their native habitats. A rhino in the Calcutta Zoo successfully gave birth in 18, but for the entire 20th century not one Sumatran Rhino was born in a zoo. In 1972, the only Sumatran Rhino remaining in captivity died at the Copenhagen Zoo.[24]
Despite the species' persistent lack of reproctive success, in the early 1980s some conservation organizations began a captive breeding program for the Sumatran Rhinoceros. Between 1984 and 1996 this ex situ conservation program transported 40 Sumatran Rhinos from their native habitat to zoos and reserves across the world. While hopes were initially high, and much research was concted on the captive specimens, by the late 1990s not a single rhino had been born in the program and most of its proponents agreed the program had been a failure. In 1997, the IUCN's Asian Rhino specialist group, which once endorsed the program, declared that it had failed "even maintaining the species within acceptable limits of mortality," noting that, in addition to the lack of births, 20 of the captured rhinos had died.[7][25] In 2004, a surra outbreak at the Sumatran Rhinoceros Conservation Centre killed all the captive rhinos in peninsular Malaysia, recing the population of captive rhinos to eight.[29][40]
Seven of these captive rhinos were sent to the United States (the other was kept in Southeast Asia), but by 1997, their numbers had dwindled to three: a female in the Los Angeles Zoo, a male in the Cincinnati Zoo, and a female in the Bronx Zoo. In a final effort, the three rhinos were united in Cincinnati. After years of failed attempts, the female from Los Angeles, Emi, became pregnant for the sixth time, with the zoo's male Ipuh. All five of her previous pregnancies ended in failure. But researchers at the zoo had learned from previous failures, and, with the aid of special hormone treatments, Emi gave birth to a healthy male calf named Andalas (an Indonesian literary word for "Sumatra") in September 2001.[41] Andalas's birth was the first successful captive birth of a Sumatran Rhino in 112 years. A female calf, named Suci (Indonesian for "pure"), followed on July 30, 2004.[42] On April 29, 2007, Emi gave birth a third time, to her second male calf, named Harapan (Indonesian for "hope") or Harry.[38][43] In 2007, Andalas, who had been living at the Los Angeles Zoo, was returned to Sumatra to take part in breeding programs with healthy females.[36][44]
Despite the recent successes in Cincinnati, the captive breeding program has remained controversial. Proponents argue that zoos have aided the conservation effort by studying the reproctive habits, raising public awareness and ecation about the rhinos, and helping raise financial resources for conservation efforts in Sumatra. Opponents of the captive breeding program argue that losses are too great; the program too expensive; removing rhinos from their habitat, even temporarily, alters their ecological role; and captive populations cannot match the rate of recovery seen in well-protected native habitats.[7][36]
[edit] Cultural depictions
A 1927 drawing of a Sumatran RhinocerosAside from those few indivials kept in zoos and pictured in books, the Sumatran Rhinoceros has remained little known, overshadowed by the more common Indian, Black and White rhinos. Recently, however, video footage of the Sumatran Rhinoceros in its native habitat and in breeding centers has been featured in several nature documentaries. Extensive footage can be found in an Asia Geographic documentary The Littlest Rhino. Natural History New Zealand showed footage of a Sumatran rhino, shot by freelance Indonesian-based cameraman Alain Compost, in the 2001 documentary The Forgotten Rhino, which featured mainly Javan and Indian rhinos.[45][46]
Though documented by droppings and tracks, pictures of the Bornean Rhinoceros were first taken and widely distributed by modern conservationists in April 2006 when camera traps photographed a healthy alt in the jungles of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo.[47] On April 24, 2007 it was announced that cameras had captured the first ever video footage of a wild Bornean Rhino. The night-time footage showed the rhino eating, peering through jungle foliage, and sniffing the film equipment. The World Wildlife Fund which took the video has used it in efforts to convince local governments to turn the area into a rhino conservation zone.[48][49]
A number of folk tales about the Sumatran Rhino were collected by colonial naturalists and hunters from the mid 1800s to early 1900s. In Burma, the belief was once widespread that the Sumatran Rhino ate fire. Tales described the fire-eating rhino following smoke to its source, especially camp-fires, and then attacking the camp. There was also a Burmese belief that the best time to hunt was every July when the Sumatran Rhinos would congregate beneath the full moon. In Malaya it was said that the rhino's horn was hollow and could be used as a sort of hose for breathing air and squirting water. In Malaya and Sumatra it was once believed that the rhino shed its horn every year and buried it under the ground. In Borneo, the rhino was said to have a strange carnivorous practice: after defecating in a stream it would turn around and eat fish that had been stupefied by the excrement.
