Source : Independent Online, South Africa, 29 Nov '05
By : Pauline Jasudason
  

Vincent Chow, an adviser to the Malaysian Nature Society, said indigenous people who live on the fringes of the Endau Rompin National Park in Johor state and regularly roam the area have failed to find any sign of the animals.

If they are indeed dead, it could be a fatal blow to the dwindling population of the Sumatran Rhinoceros in Malaysia. Besides Johor, another 80 to 100 rhinos are believed to exist in the wild in other national parks in the country, according to official estimates. Conservationists say the number might be smaller.

"It may not be extinct in Malaysia," Chow told The Associated Press. But "wallows," the mud pits that rhinos regularly visit, in Endau Rompin have become overgrown and dry, which "leads us to worry" that the rhinos are not coming there any more, he said. "We believe they are gone."

Rhinos frequent the same mud pits, or wallows, over the course of their life, where they roll on the ground to smear their bodies with wet soil to keep ticks away.

Endau Rompin park's director, Hashim Yusof, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press, except to say he will investigate Chow's claim.

Chow blamed poachers who hunt the rhino for its horn and other body parts. The animal is worth about 100 000 ringgit (about R170 000) each on the black market, he said.

"The national park is very porous and just too big to patrol, it's in excess of 48 000 hectares of rugged terrain," he said. "Poachers have been known to go in by helicopters to escape detection."

"The Sumatran rhino - bristly, snub-nosed, bathtub-sized versions of the African variety - is among the rarest of large mammals. Less than 300 are believed to be living in the wild, mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia, and are being threatened by poachers and loss of habitat.

Chow urged Malaysian wildlife authorities and park officials to be more aggressive in protecting threatened species "before there is nothing left to protect."

"They are the custodians, they should be more responsible," he said, suggesting authorities "immediately launch a survey of this animal."

In 2003, disease killed off seven Sumatran rhinos in a 16-year-old captive breeding program in central Malaysia, shutting down one of the few efforts to save the species from extinction.

Captive breeding programs are also being run in the United States at the Cincinnati Zoo and the Los Angeles Zoo and at sanctuaries in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo.