Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the chances of a successful agreement were slim. For the past twenty years, conservationists
had been unable to persuade the Indonesian government to move rhinos from western Java
to two other parks just across the narrow strait that separated Ujung Kulon from southern Su-
matra. Moreover, opponents of the proposed transfer from Java to Vietnam had argued that
the Javan population is a different subspecies and should remain separate from the Indochin-
ese variety.
Nevertheless, moving some animals from Ujung Kulon to Vietnam could also help Indone-
sia's rhinos. In 1883, the eruption of Krakatoa triggered a tsunami that leveled the Java forest.
What had been a mature forest, containing little for browsing rhinos to eat, rapidly became
a secondary forest, which grew full of
Macaranga
, a preferred food plant, along with other
pioneer plants the rhinos browsed. Forty years later, enough time has passed that the pioneer
plants have given way to mature forest species, which hold less appeal for rhinos. So the fifty
or so remaining rhinos in Java may have reached a population ceiling imposed by their food
supply. As of 2012, plans were under way to translocate a small number from Ujung Kulon
to a second destination on Java.
Vy's efforts to show us an orange-necked partridge, his hospitality, and his delight in being
with others who shared his passion for birds and nature offered a different kind of marker
of the present in relation to the past than did a bomb crater filled with wallowing elephants.
Thirty-three years after departure of the last American soldiers, two American biologists fol-
lowed their Vietnamese colleague through the forest in search of a rare bird, together trying
to find a way to save it from extinction. If there is need to find evidence of hope for the hu-
man race, I offer this shred from postwar Vietnam.
Such scraps of optimism are important to cling to, in order to imagine that the Asian nation
with the highest concentrations of rare species will manage to preserve many of them. Those
cryptic species that remain tucked away in the wettest reaches of the Annamites might be
safe from war and its aftermath. But over the seven years that have elapsed since my visit,
the string of conservation news from Vietnam has gone from grave concern to tragedy. While
writing this chapter, I learned that the last Javan rhino in Vietnam had been killed, shot by a
poacher. The official wildlife agency in Hanoi had no comment. Sadly, Vietnam also now has
the dubious distinction of being the depot for much of Asia's illegal trade in tiger parts and
rhino horn. One reason for the surge in the illegal sale of rhino horn is the emergence there of
the false belief that it cures cancer. Beyond extirpating their own rhinos, Vietnam's wildlife
criminal gangs are decimating rhino populations in other countries as well. Even the adapta-
tions rare ungulates such as saolas and muntjacs have developed for avoiding leopards, and
now humans, will not protect them when commercial hunters carpet the Vietnamese jungles
with snares. Snaring for prey is ubiquitous, and in most reserves protection is not enforced.
In 2011, for example, three teams of community forest guards in four months collected 7,700
