Conservation group, Borneo Rhino Alliance, posted on their Facebook page yesterday that one of Malaysia’s last Sumatran rhinos was euthanized after a painful battle with cancer.
Puntung, as she was called, was found to have squamous cell carcinoma. It was first noticed after investigations into an infected tooth revealed that the cause of the infection was a more serious disease. Specialists all over the world concluded that with, or without treatment, the disease was terminal.
She lived an incredible live. Those who kept tabs on here in the Tabin wildlife reserve called her a fighter. She survived an attempted poaching as a calf, although her foot was cut off in her escape. She persevered, and continued to thrive in the jungle. She became pregnant in the wild, although she lost her baby. In need of surgery, she survived the ordeal, but lived the rest of her life with painful cysts in her uterus as a result. She did not give up.
BORA eulogized that this spirit is “how we will honor her. By embracing her tenacity for life.”
Sumatran rhinos spend hours a day rolling in mud. To be kept clean is an incredibly stressful state for the animals, and specialists felt that attempts to treat Puntung’s cancer would cause her more distress, than good. At best, extend her life by a few months, but ultimately, she would succumb to the disease.
There are two Sumatran rhinos left in Malaysia, and less than one hundred left in Indonesia. The numbers dying in captivity stand at three in three and a half years. There has only been one birth in captivity, and many conservationists worry that the number of death will exceed births to the point of extinction.
BORA has vowed “just like Puntung, [they] will not give up.”
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