Malaysia's Last Male Rhino Dies

Tam enjoys a mud wallow in 2014

The last male Sumatran rhinoceros, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, alive in Malaysia died Monday further reducing the chances the species will avoid extinction in the wild.  The male named Tam died in the the care of his veterinarians at BORA, the Borneo Rhino Alliance, in Sabah, Malaysia.  His health had been deteriorating for some time.  At one time Tam represented the hope of conservationists to establish a viable captive breeding program in Malaysia.  D. sumatrensis is a decedent of the woolly rhino that lived during the Ice Age; only about 80 Sumatran rhinos are estimated to exist at present.  Tam was rescued from a palm oil plantation in 2008; he was thought to be 35 years old.

The breeding program was foiled by rhino biology, lack of funding, and politics.  Tam had poor quality sperm, and both the females he was to be bred with had uterine tumors. {08.06.17}  Attempts to exchange rhino gametes with Indonesia were not successful.  Little is known of Sumatran rhino reproductive physiology and converting ordinary cells in the laboratory into viable embryos is complex, so in vitro insemination was a long shot at best.  More than 70% of the Sabah rhino population on the island of Borneo has been lost to deforestation and the Asian horn trade.  Indonesia now holds the only remaining Sumatran rhinos on Earth, scattered among three national parks.  Seven of these are held in semi-natural conditions as part of a breeding program.  Two calves were born in that program in 2012 and 2016.