The recent deaths of all five captive Sumatran rhinoceroses at the Sungai Dusun Sumatran Rhinoceros Conservation Centre in Selangor is yet another step towards extinction for this unfortunate species. Despite the successful breeding of other endangered species in captivity, it is unlikely that the entire process can be achieved for the rhino. The objective of captive breeding must always be to release the young into the wild and to repopulate their original habitat. No species can be artificially sustained in pens forever.
Breeding in captivity is the first problem and this is elusive enough, but the subsequent problem is just as difficult: where is the habitat into which the young are to be released? Malaysia is losing more and more lowland forest every year and with fragmentation and depletion of species diversity as forest reserves are logged, no matter how selectively, there is not enough habitat to sustain wild breeding populations.
To ensure sufficient genetic diversity of any species, biologists believe there must be at least five separate breeding populations of any plant or animal. We cannot save an animal if there is only one breeding pair as eventually inbreeding saps vitality.
Extinction is not necessarily an easily identified point in time for any species. Some idealists believe that merely mapping DNA will be enough for future generations to recreate a lost species and that even if all specimens are dead there is a chance to clone it later. This might produce a zoo exhibit, but it has nothing to do with protecting biodiversity for the long term.
Unfortunately, if an animal no longer has a place in the world, apart from in zoos, genetic banks and breeding centres, then its path to extinction is pretty well determined. Captive animals are never as vigorous as in the wild and they are easy prey to Sungai Dusun type events.
This will be the fate of many species in the coming decades as long as we believe that we can have it all. Unfortunately, we can’t have it all and we must plan now if we are going to really protect our biodiversity rather than just give lip service. Taman Negara alone is not enough to protect our biological heritage, we need more parks in fragile areas that must be sacrosanct, and a proper network of links between protected areas needs to be planned and enforced so that isolated populations of a species can interbreed naturally.
If they have to depend on man for their breeding, without enough space in the wild, they are doomed; and so are we. Our selfishness as a species has made us extraordinarily successful, but we will so easily become victims of that success if we cannot see that the destruction of our shared, broader habitat for short term benefit is not good for our long term survival. Losing the rhinoceros, tiger, orang hutan and elephant, and the forest ecosystems they have occupied for millennia, will impoverish our own habitat and once that impoverishment spreads to other systems it will impact on us in serious ways.
Angela Hijjas
Chairman, Selangor Branch
Malaysian Nature Society.