Can Anything Save the Sumatran Rhino From Extinction?
More rhino babies are needed—and fast—says the author of a new report on the dwindling number of species in Malaysia.
In 2008, a rhino wandered into an oil-palm plantation in Sabah, a state on the Malaysian island of Borneo. It was limping from a snare injury and, for a rhino, was unfamiliar looking: very small—and hairy.
When Rasmus Gren Havmøller—a Danish Ph.D. student focused on conservation, ecology, and genetics at the University of Copenhagen—read about this little rhino in a World Wildlife Fund article, he was intrigued. So he began digging for more information about the species.
What he learned was grim: The Sumatran rhino, one of three Asian species, had declined to the point of near extinction.
Sumatrans are believed to be the oldest surviving rhino species. They’re the smallest living rhinos and the only Asian rhinos with two horns. They
