Zoo plans to mate rhino siblings to save species

Six-year-old Harapan is one of only two Sumatran rhinos in North America. The other rhino is his older sister, nine-year-old Suci. So, in the next few months, scientists at Cincinnati's Linder Center for Conservation & Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) are hoping to work their magic and have the siblings mate to help save the species.



In April, about a hundred participants gathered in Singapore for a Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit where news that only about 100 of the two-horned, hairy rhinos are left in their native southeast Asia, meaning the population has decreased by more than 50 percent in the past decade. Dr. Terri Roth, director of CREW at Cincinnati Zoo, said it’s not ideal to breed siblings, but there are not enough Sumatran rhinos available to prevent it.



“We are down to the last male and female Sumatran rhino on the continent, and I am not willing to sit idle and watch the last of a species go extinct,” he said. Harapan and his sister are two of three successful Sumatran rhinos born at the Cincinnati Zoo. The zoo is responsible for the first calf bred in captivity in 112 years when Andalas, Harapan and Suci’s father, was born in September 2001.


YouTube link. Original news video.

Harapan was born in 2007 in Cincinnati, but was moved to White Oak Conservation Center in Florida and then to the Los Angeles Zoo, which is also part of a team of zoos and organizations trying to save the Sumatran rhinos that includes the Cincinnati Zoo, the International Rhino Foundation, the Indonesian Rhino Foundation, SOS Rhino and World Wildlife Fund. If Harapan and Suci successfully mate, a new Sumatran calf will be born 16 months later.