SUMATRAN
RHINO - ENVIRONMENT
News: Critically endangered Sumatran rhino
born at Indonesian sanctuary
What's
in the news?
●
A sanctuary in Indonesia is celebrating
the birth of a Sumatran rhino, the most threatened species of rhinoceros in the
world.
Sumatran
Rhino:
●
Sumatran rhinos are the smallest of the living rhinoceroses and the only Asian rhino with two horns.
Habitat:
●
The Sumatran rhino once roamed as far away
as the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas in Bhutan and eastern India, through
Myanmar, Thailand, possibly to Vietnam and China, and south through the Malay
Peninsula.
Features:
●
They are covered with long hair and are
more closely related to the extinct woolly rhinos than any of the other rhino
species alive today.
●
Calves are born with a dense covering that
turns reddish-brown in young adults and becomes sparse, bristly and almost
black in older animals.
●
Sumatran rhinos compete with the Javan
rhino for the unenviable title of most threatened rhino species.
●
While surviving in possibly greater
numbers than the Javan rhino, Sumatran rhinos are more threatened due to
habitat loss and fragmentation.
●
The remaining animals survive in small,
fragmented non-viable populations, and with limited possibilities to find each
other to breed, its population decline continues.
IUCN
Status - Critically
Endangered
Go
back to basics:
Rhino
Species:
●
Black Rhino, White Rhino, Greater
One-Horned Rhino, Javan Rhino and Sumatran Rhino are the five different species
of Rhino.
Conservation
Status:
●
The three species of Rhino in Asia —
Greater one-horned, Javan and Sumatran. Javan
and Sumatran Rhino are critically endangered and the Greater one-horned (or
Indian) rhino is vulnerable in the IUCN Red List.
Rhino
range countries:
●
They are spread across India, Nepal,
Bhutan, Indonesia and Malaysia. These countries are also known as Asian Rhino
Range Countries.
●
Only the Great one-horned rhino is found
in India.