L.A. Zoo Joins Global Effort to Save Rhinos

One day in August, an unsuspecting female rhinoceros made its daily grub search through the jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia, fell into a pit and unwittingly volunteered for a breeding program intended to replenish the species.

The rare rhinoceros was brought to the Los Angeles Zoo earlier this week, part of an international program to preserve endangered wildlife. Zookeepers said the unnamed 7-year-old will winter in the Southland before moving to a permanent home at the Bronx Zoo.

On Friday, while the half-ton visitor splashed water and wallowed in mud at a pool side press conference in Los Angeles, zoo officials described the program to establish rhino breeding groups in four U.S. cities.

Under an agreement between the Indonesian government and zoos in Cincinnati, San Diego, New York and Los Angeles, five males and five females will be sent to the United States as they are brought into captivity, said Jim Doherty, curator for the New York Zoological Society.

A preserve also is being established in Indonesia, Los Angeles Zoo Director Warren Thomas said.

To reduce climatic changes for the rhinos, Los Angeles has been the stopping place for the animals headed east, program officials said. In their natural habitat--the humid rain forests of Southeast Asia--temperatures range from 80 to 95 degrees.

The goal of the program is to ensure that the estimated 500 members of the Sumatran species do not die out and to help restore balance to a wildlife environment that has been upset by Indonesia’s industrial and agricultural development, Thomas said.

Doherty said that rhinos, along with “countless other species,” are being squeezed out of their natural homeland, as rain forests are chopped down for lumber and to make room for cash crops such as palm oil plants.

“There are animals that are going to disappear that haven’t even been identified yet,” the curator said. “It’s really a problem with people. The damage is, in part, because people in countries such as our own are not as careful about conservation as we should be. We are the ones providing a major market for wood and wood products.”