by DAN
SEWELL | Associated Press – Fri, Oct 30, 2015
CINCINNATI
(AP) — The last Sumatran rhino in the Western Hemisphere began a journey Friday
from Ohio to its ancestral southeast Asian homeland on a mission to help
preserve the critically endangered species.
The
8-year-old male, Harapan, will make an air, land and sea trip of more than
10,000 miles. Including stops, the journey's expected to take some 50 hours
before the rhino reaches an Indonesian sanctuary. A veteran Cincinnati Zoo
animal keeper who was at the Sumatran rhino sanctuary when Harapan's older
brother became a father there in 2012 is accompanying the rhino, along with a
zoo veterinarian.
Conservationists
hope Harapan can mate with one or more of the three females in the Sumatran
Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park.
Zoo
officials said the 1,800-pound rhino underwent medical checks and was trained to
walk into and voluntarily remain in a specially made travel crate. Keeper Paul
Reinhart and veterinarian Jenny Nollman will travel with Harapan, who will have
six cases of ficus along with bananas, apples and pears for his in-flight
meals.
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.
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