KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA) should think even more seriously to preserve every Sumatran Rhinocerous genome.
“This is so that hopefully in 10 to 20 years from now there will be advances in reproductive technology and it will be possible to produce baby rhino embryos from these preserved materials,” said BORA executive director Datuk Dr Junaidi Payne, a few days after the death of Gelogob, a female Sumatran Rhino that had been kept at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Zoo.
He said that these include cells preserved in liquid Nitrogen and or it could be Gelogob’s whose cell line was maintained at a laboratory in Germany.
Dr Junaidi added that the death of Gelogob also highlighted how institutions need to work together and that includes Indonesia, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) and Cincinnati Zoo.
“They should not be thinking that the rhinos are Indonesian, or Malaysian or Sabahan. The crucial need is to produce baby rhinos.”
He also shared that the plan for this year is to capture one or more rhinos in the wild.