14 DAY TRIAL // In late March, conservationists proudly announced that they had captured a critically endangered Sumatran rhino female, and that they were planning to enter it into a captive-breeding program.
Unfortunately, recent news on the topic says that the female is likely to have a fairly difficult time becoming a mom, regardless of which male rhino conservationists choose to pair it with.
Thus, Mongabay informs that, according to wildlife researchers in Sabah, Malaysia, the female, whose name is Iman, sports several tumors in its uterus. Specialists who have had the chance to examine the animal say these tumors are likely to hinder reproduction.
“We care here with hope that based on initial ultrasound images there was a probability that Iman was pregnant but when we did a more thorough examination we learned that there is no fetus in her uterus but big big tumors, some as big as footballs. ”
“What we found out today was a dramatic emotional roller-coaster,” specialist Thomas Hildebrand with the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Researcher (IZW, for short) told the press in a recent interview.
It is believed that Iman came to develop these tumors due to the fact that it spent about 5-10 years without a male partner. Given the severity of its condition, conservationists are thinking about resorting to measures such as in vitro fertilization to get the female rhino to become pregnant.
Conservationists say that, presently, just 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the wild. The species inhabits the island of Borneo and Sumatra, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers it to be a critically endangered one.
Due to the fact that so few Sumatran rhinos are left in the world, there are some who argue that the only way to save the species from going extinct is to facilitate contact between remaining individuals and thus encourage breeding by placing these animals in controlled sanctuaries.
“We should now think seriously in terms of bringing Sumatran rhinos together in large, fenced, managed facilities, perhaps on a specially-managed area of non-government owned farm land. This is how the African rhinos and two bison species were saved from extinction a century ago,” John Payne with the Bornean Rhino Alliance said in a statement.
The trouble is that, in order for such an initiative to prove successful, high officials in the regions inhabited by these animals and wildlife researchers from different countries must all work together, and, by the looks of it, certain animosities are preventing them from doing so.