World's rarest rhinos filmed for first time - Attacks camera

June 2008. Cameras installed to capture wildlife footage in the jungles of South East Asia have twice recorded remarkable images of the world's rarest rhino accompanied by a calf. However after a short inspection, the rhino mother charged the camera and sent it flying in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java, Indonesia. Javan rhinos occur only in that park and one in Vietnam.

Camera trap success & puzzle

Recordings of the Javan rhino are the highlight so far of the installation over recent months of improved video-based wildlife recording equipment, which in its pioneering phase in Malaysia has already provided footages of rare Malayan tigers in the wild and a Sumatran Rhino in Borneo.

"Setting cameras such as these is always a challenge, especially with animals as rare and elusive as the Javan rhino,"   said WWF Malaysia photographer Stephen Hogg, who designed the video-traps. "The assault on the camera still has us baffled because we specifically use Infra Red (IR) lights as the source of illumination when we designed and built these units so as to not scare animals away when the camera activates."

"We are proposing a test translocation of a few Javan rhinos in the near future to establish a new population in a new area. This requires hard data and reliable science and setting up video traps allows us to do that without stop sending researchers to spend the night on rickety bamboo platforms trying to observe these highly endangered rhinos," said Adhi. "Since the video traps don't have any moving parts and are very silent, they can be placed much closer than humans along the favourite haunts of the Javan rhinos, like salt licks, trails and mud wallows."

"We are encouraged by the initial results from these video trap, and hope this data will help the park authorities to understand the population dynamics and behaviour of Javan rhinos better and help manage the threats to this population in a more scientific manner", said Agus Priambudi, Head of Ujung Kulon National Park.

Less than 70 left alive

Javan rhinos are found only in two locations in the world with Ujung Kulong NP in Java, Indonesia estimated to have around 60 rhinos -- more than 90 percent of the global population. To prevent the rhino population from going extinct from a sudden catastrophe like a diseases or other natural disasters, the Government of Indonesia recently launched rhino conservation strategy titled "Project Rhino Century (Proyek Abad Badak) in partnership with WWF, International Rhino Foundation (IRF), Yayasan Badak Indonesia (YABI), dan US Fish and Wildlife Service to create additional Javan rhino populations by translocating a few individuals from Ujung Kulon to another suitable site.