 Reference Base  Mammals of Borneo, field keys and an annotated checklist |
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Medway, Lord, 1977. Mammals of Borneo, field keys and an annotated checklist. Kuala Lumpur, MBRAS (Monograph no. 7), pp. i-xii, 1-172
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| Location: |
Asia - South East Asia - Malaysia - Sarawak |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Status |
| Species: |
Sumatran Rhino |
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By the early 1930s, rhinoceroses could still be found in most parts of Borneo, but under acute hunting pressure survived only in remote and inaccessible terrain (Banks, 1931a; Zondag, 1931; Keller, 1932; Witkamp, 1932a). Banks (1931a) concluded, rather surprisingly in the light of his own evidence, that `there can at the moment be no fear of Rhinoceros becoming scarce for as many as 36 trophies were brought into Belaga in two years not so long ago and I have met men who have shot over 30 in the course of their lifetime'. By the end of this decade, in Sarawak the rhinoceros had been exterminated even in its last strongholds in the interior of the northeast. Banks (1937) wrote that during `a prolonged visit to the Ulu Trusan into a once populous rhino country, I saw only once a trace made about three years ago and nothing else under five years ago; the locality is remote and high up, but every one of the many old wallows passed had the remains of a Dayak hut within a few hundred yards, and even up on the highest peaks the wandering hunters had left their traces. A once populous rhino district has been wiped out' The situation elsewhere was equally extreme (Comyn-Platt, 1937; Anon, 1939).
Ten years later, T. Harrisson (1949) wrote, `There are now almost certainly no rhinoceros left in Sarawak', although he was able to report observations in 1946 from the upper S. Padas, in Sabah, and in 1945 from S. Raya and from high ground in the upper S. Bahau in Kalimantan. In the Kelabit uplands Harrisson later found (Harrisson, in Davis, 1958) that `the Sumatran rhinoceros, once common in the area in the last century even breaking fences around padi fields - has not been reported anywhere in the area for twenty years. There are living Kelabits who have killed more than ten'.
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