User talk:Miharris/Sumatran rhinos

Orginal reporting notes

From Roth's USI lecture

“At the Cincinnati Zoo, we focus on a few key programs…We have four things we concentrate on – rhinos, small cats, exceptional plants and polar bears. We work with zoos all over the world, and it’s really this collaboration that makes this all work. When working with endangered animals, your challenges are never over and you learn to expect the unexpected.” “In the 1980s, there was a lot of concern about how are we going to save these Sumatran rhinos…The Indonesian government agreed to a captive breeding program with U.S. zoos…The idea was the U.S. would breed them, then return them back to the wild…” “The rhinos are extremely solitary and it was very hard to get to them. We received seven rhinos from Indonesia and the problems started almost right away…A couple of them died, and they may have died because we were feeding them the wrong thing… The odds are against us, this is going to be a hard species too save. It’s been a roller coaster experenince and it’s been a challenge… We were finally down to two in America, and they were both brother and sister. And we were going to breed them just because we didn’t really have any other choice. ..	Indonesia made it very clear that we weren’t going to get any more rhinos.