Envoy role for our Sumatran rhino Gelugob
Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Department of Wildlife has decided to ‘appoint’ 35-year old female Sumatran rhino Gelugob as ‘ambassador’ of the species to highlight their plight, said Dr Sen, Senior Veterinarian of Sabah Wildlife Department.
Dr Zainal Zahari, the Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) Chief Vet at Tabin , said the ambassador role in an emergency situation is most appropriate for Gelugob, since it has completely run out of its reproductive usefulness as it is not producing eggs any more.
A gathering of the most competent experts at the Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit in Singapore early April this year warned that the species had arrived at the gate of hell, noting that the animal is rapidly running out of space numbers in their range countries.
Dr San said total world rhino population is estimated at less than 50 with a low 10 coming from Sabah, the rest in Indonesia – an all time low which has alarmed rhino experts who argued that collaborative breeding programmes using proven success methods should not wait even one more day.
One of their advice is to send Sabah’s fertile male Tam to the US ‘tomorrow’ to mate with fertile nine-year-old Suci bred by Dr Terri Roth in 2004.
However, Dr Zainal said heavy bureaucratic shackles at national borders bar even rhino urine from export, let alone genetic materials.
“We are at crisis, we are desperate,” Dr Terri Roth, the Vet at Cincinnati Zoo, famous for siring three baby rhinos through natural breeding in captivity, highlighted the dire situation facing the species but assured the meeting that science now has the answer to build up a safeguarding population to save the species.
Being one of the only two remaining range countries, Dr Sen said his Department has decided to translocate Gelugob from Tabin to the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park as an ambassador to raise public awareness of not only it plight but also the scientific breakthroughs which Sabah will use to avert its extinction in the State.
“Given that the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park attracted 158,936 visitors in 2012, Gelugob can do the species a heck of a big favour if we can awaken just 10pc of that volume of visitors that this charismatic animal has indeed arrived at the gate of hell and it need their active support for our coming breeding programmes and habitat conservation,” Dr Sen said.
“As such we are going to do a major improvement programme to its exhibit ground, we’ll improve the substrates, put more sand to it, re-turf the entire hectare size grounds, remove some of the stones and also relocate the sambar deer which had grazed the grass to basically bare ground,” Dr Sen said.
“We will also improve the mud wallow to suit its health needs in addition to construction of an information booth,” he told reporters.
Visitors had emailed the Daily Express they were not seeing enough mud on Gelugob and the ground condition too barren and hot for an animal that depends on wallowing in mud most of the day to cool off, protect the skin from getting too thin and inflammation and from insect bites.
However, if it rains a lot, the animal won’t get much mud cover even in it’s natural forest environment, Dr Zainal conceded.
Dr Sen said it was Gelugob which created the existing wallow under some trees but keepers erected concrete edges around the wallow to bar debris and erosive materials from filling the wallow.
Dr Rosa Sipangkui said her staff have to clean the wallow every day because Gelugob drops five kilos of poops in the wallow daily.
Gelugob is already blind but it is able to find its way to the wallow and back to the paddock by the scent of its own urine, she said.
“That’s the only place she would poop and if we don’t clean it daily, she won’t go in,” Dr Rosa revealed the daily grind in caring for a Sumatran rhino.
Source : Daily Express
