Nardelli, F., 1985. The Sumatran Rhinoceros Project. Help Newsletter, Port Lympne 7: 4-8, figs. 1-2
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| Location: |
Asia |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Reasons for decline |
| Species: |
Sumatran Rhino |
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One of the most seriously endangered mammals in the world, thanks to the loss of its preferred rain-forest habitat, poaching, and other factors upsetting the normal patterns of the animal's life in the wild.
Even before the destruction of so much of its preferred habitat, hunting was a constant threat to the Sumatran rhino. The prices given for its horn (ground to powder to supply the demand for its reputed aphrodisiac properties) and almost all its other parts, which are said to have medicinal effects, mean that hunters are still eager to trap it in pits or hunt it with weighted spears or poisoned darts. This little rhino seems to have suffered more from poaching than any, other Asian species. During the twenties and thirties hunters from Thailand, having virtually exterminated the animal in their own country, crossed the border into Burma and repeated the operation there, even as late as the 1960s. Counts of the number of horns sent from Borneo and Sumatra, mostly to Singapore and China, show that hundreds of rhinos have been shot or trapped there in the last eighty years. The strong and lasting belief in the power of rhinoceros horn, especially among the Chinese, means that hunters can still sell the product of even a single beast - blood, bones, teeth, skin, as well as horns - at prices high enough to make the risk worth taking. If this trade could be stopped in cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok, conservation of the rhino would be given a great boost.
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The Sumatran Rhinoceros Project
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