Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
but unfortunately, no sightings.” Weighing about 1,000 kilograms, Javan rhinos are perhaps
the sixth-largest living land mammal, but spotting one, like spotting a kouprey, seemed im-
probable.
How circumstances had changed for this now rare megaherbivore. Until several hundred
years ago, the Javan rhino ranged far from its namesake island all the way to northeastern
India. Biologist George Schaller once told me that, surprisingly, before the French Indochina
War in the 1950s more Javan rhinos may have roamed in Indochina than on Java.
As Professor Giao explained more about his field studies, it occurred to me that Javan rhi-
nos possessed a trait that had served the species well during wartime. Their ability to adapt
their behavior from a diurnal feeding cycle to one that was nocturnal and silent equipped
them to take shelter in the daytime. They survived on the browse available while hiding in an
impenetrable thicket of spiny rattan that even guerillas shunned. As long as the Javan rhino's
energetic requirements could be met by eating only at night, it could avoid being seen.
We made plans to meet John MacKinnon, who was also in town, at a cafeteria favored by
university students. It wasn't hard to spot our man—a tall, pale Westerner with gray hair, the
only person there over the age of fifty. He would be headed next, he said, to a mountainous
section of the Vu Quang area northwest of Hue. “Satellite photos show this to be the largest
block of intact forest in the country,” he noted. “It's very wet, it's a highly restricted area,
and no Westerner has been in there.” Biologists have long suspected that the wettest tropic-
al forests hold the greatest hotbeds of rarities. The scientific rationale for the rarity distribu-
tion: superwet forests probably served as refuges for numerous species during dry epochs,
and when the wet periods returned, many stayed put.
John's brilliance far overshadowed his reputation for being difficult. In addition to helping
to set up Vietnam's new park system, he was also here to find koupreys and other rare large
mammals rumored to be lurking about. Drawn into a tense competition with several Western
biologists to find these missing species, he planned to reach them first.
After meeting with John, we headed to Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam's answer to
Yellowstone. Reaching the park would require driving for five hours on a rough track and
ferrying across several rivers. During our first hour or so out of Hanoi, the landscape revealed
little of interest. As we drove on, the eroded limestone cliffs we saw rising from the plains
resembled the foreground of an ancient Asian landscape painting. A copse of lowland forest
was hard to find in the vast panorama of paddy fields and limestone pinnacles between Hanoi
and Cuc Phuong. Vietnam was well on its way to challenging Thailand as the world's num-
ber one exporter of rice.
Sadly, our tight schedule and government chaperone gave us no time to stop and explore
one of the world's greatest yet least known reservoirs of rarities. Had we ascended the lime-
stone cliffs, we would have found enough specimens on their rich flanks to spend years cata-
