Tag Archives: Sumatra rhino

How to Save Rhinos? Make them Radioactive

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In a pioneering effort to combat wildlife trafficking of the threatened rhinoceros, a South African University began implementing a project supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The project combines the safe insertion of radioactive isotopes into rhino horns… to deter and detect illegal poaching.

With over 10,000 rhinos lost to poaching in the past decade, South Africa – home to the world’s largest population of rhinos – remains a target for criminals driven by the illegal trade of rhino horn. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, the South African Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment reported 103 rhinos poached. In response, this project run by the University of the Witwatersrand is using radiation to support conservation and enforcement efforts.

The Rhisotope Project was created in 2021 with the idea to tag rhino horns with radioactive material. This makes the horns detectable by radiation portal monitors (RPMs) already deployed at borders, ports and airports worldwide. These RPMs, commonly used to detect nuclear and other radioactive material, can now be harnessed against wildlife crime.

Excerpt from Nuclear Science and Nuclear Security Infrastructure to Protect Rare Rhinos: IAEA-Supported Project Marks a Milestone, IAEA News, July 2025

Colossal Efforts to Bring Back Species on the Brink of Extinction

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Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company, announced on October 1, 2024 the formation of The Colossal Foundation…The Foundation is launching with three core programmatic focuses.

Saving today’s at-risk species: Colossal Foundation plans to build a model for integrating cutting-edge biotechnology with conservation efforts to bring back species that have been driven to the brink of extinction. The long term goal is to create a toolkit approach to simplify genetic rescue for conservationists. Initial projects include efforts focused on the Vaquita, Northern White and Sumatran Rhinos, Red Wolf, Northern Quoll, Ivory Billed Woodpecker, and Pink Pigeon.

R&D for Conservation: Colossal will partner to fund and deploy technologies that leverage artificial intelligence…Current projects include the Colossal drone-based anomaly detection system used by Save the Elephants, a vaquita acoustic monitoring program, and an AI-enabled orphaned elephant monitoring system leveraged by Elephant Havens in Botswana.

Ensuring Tomorrow’s Biodiversity: Developing a distributed genetic repository of species (a biobank) which can act as an insurance policy against unforeseen threats to biodiversity and provide a safety net for species facing extinction. The focus will be on those species closest to extinction to ensure their genetic diversity is not lost and the potential to bring them back, should the worst happen, remains. 

Vaquitas, a porpoise endemic to the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California in Baja California, Mexico and the smallest of all living cetaceans, is on the brink of extinction. As of May 2023, only between 10 and 13 vaquitas remain. The loss of the vaquita could be a harbinger of further declines in the Gulf’s marine ecosystems, and the extinction of the vaquita would represent a cultural and symbolic loss. Colossal, in partnership with the Vaquita Monitoring Group and in support of the Mexican government’s La Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP) believes that there are low-impact technical solutions that can be used to safely biobank the existing animals while also helping to grow the vaquita population. …

Fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos survive in tiny fragmented populations across the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo…Colossal Foundation will  supporting the Indonesian government’s work to breed Sumatran rhinos under their national conservation breeding program…in collaboration with Global Experts on the advance Assisted Reproductive Technology (a-ART) and Biobank program for the species…

The Colossal BioVault is an initiative, in partnership with Re:wild and others, to collect the primary materials needed to prevent extinction. By collecting tissue samples of the world’s most imperiled species in the Colossal BioVault, the Foundation intends to preserve and store biodiversity. 

Excerpts from Colossal Launches The Colossal Foundation, Business Wire, Oct. 1, 2024

Re-Creating the Rhino

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A Sumatran rhinoceros born in Indonesia has given renewed hope to environmentalists looking to save the critically endangered species.  A rhino named Ratu gave birth to the female calf on May 12, 2015, at a rhino sanctuary in the Way Kambas National Park on the island of Sumatra.

The new arrival for 15-year-old Ratu, and her mate Andalas*, follows the couple’s first baby Andatu, who made history in 2012 as the first rhino born in captivity in Indonesia in more than a century.

* Andalas, was born at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2001…. In 2001 he was the first captive Sumatran rhino born in 112 years  He moved to the sanctuary in Indonesia in 2007.

Excerpts from Rare Sumatran rhino born in Indonesia, Reuters,  May 13, 2016

Sumatran Rhinos

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The last Sumatran rhino in the Western Hemisphere began a journey on October 30, 2015 from Ohio, United States to its ancestral southeast Asian homeland on a mission to help preserve the critically endangered species. …Conservationists hope Harapan can mate with one or more of the three females in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park….Numbers of the two-horned “hairy rhinos,” descendants of Ice Age wooly rhinos, have fallen by some 90 percent since the mid-1980s as development of their forest habitat and poachers seeking their horns took their toll. Including three Sumatran rhinos in a sanctuary in Malaysia, only nine are in captivity globally.

Harapan’s departure ends the Cincinnati Zoo’s captive breeding program for the species that produced three rhinos….Indonesian officials are anxious to get Harapan to their sanctuary. They have said they don’t want to be dependent on other countries in conservation efforts by sending rhinos to be bred abroad, but welcome technological or scientific assistance for their breeding program.Conservationists and government officials met in Singapore in 2013 for a Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit to discuss ways to save the species.

Excerpts from DAN SEWELL, Sumatran Rhino Begins US-Asia Trip to Ancestral Home, Associated Press, Oct. 30, 2015