World's rarest rhino caught on film

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/earth/wildlife/4943492/Worlds-rarest-rhino-caught-of-film.html


Footage of the Javanese rhinoceros, the world's rarest mammal, has been released by the World Wildlife Fund. (Click link above) The charity captured the creatures using infra-red cameras in Ujung Kulon National Park on Java, in Indonesia. There are believed to be only 60 in Ujung Kulon and one other group of perhaps eight animals at a reserve in Vietnam.

"These rhinos are very shy. In the last 20 years our team has only seen rhinos two or three times with their own eyes," said WWF Asian rhino coordinator Christy Williams. The video shows a mother and her calf wallowing in mud, including behaviour the researchers say has never been observed before.

"The videos are showing a lot of young animals but not many calves so even though there is evidence of breeding it is not enough," Williams said. "A healthy rhino population should be increasing at about seven per cent a year or about three or four calves, but here we are getting three or four calves every four or five years." The rhinos are so rarely observed that little is known about their mating habits.

The Javanese rhinoceros was once the most common of Asia's rhino species, found from eastern India to Vietnam. It has been driven to the brink of extinction by hunting for the Chinese medicine trade and habitat loss, including during the Vietnam War.

The Ujung Kulon National Park on the western tip of Java includes Krakatoa, the volcano whose massive eruption in 1883 devastated the area. The rhinos later returned but humans never did, creating a sanctuary. The WWF is examining the possibility of "translocating" some rhinos to another national park on Java to reduce the risk that the entire species could be wiped out by disease, a volcanic eruption or any other unforeseen event.