“I've seen dung and footprints,” Gert Polet, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Chief Technical Advisor to Cat Tien National Park told me as we made our way out of Ho Chi Minh City. “But, in three years I've never seen the Rhino,” he added.

Having read all the latest research, I knew any thoughts of waking up early in a forest tree house surrounded by a field of grazing Javan Rhinos were mere fantasy. However, I realised I was scuppered before I’d even started when Gert went on to tell me, “The Rhinos all live in one small area, Cat Loc and we can’t allow visitors in.”

Javan Rhinos were thought to be extinct on mainland Asia until 1988 when a hunter was arrested for trying to sell the horn and hide of a female Javan Rhino he had shot near Cat Tien National Park. Continuous decimation caused by hunting in pre-colonial times, defoliants during the Vietnam war and conversion of forest into agricultural land have all conspired to bring about the current dire situation. WWF say the Javan Rhino in Vietnam, a sub species of the Javan Rhino in Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia is “now perhaps the most endangered large mammal in the world.” (April 23 2001). No more than eight are thought to remain in Cat Loc, a hostile area festooned with steep, muddy hills, bamboo and leeches.

In the past Javan Rhinos inhabited a far greater reach throughout the whole of mainland South East Asia. Now a small 6,500 hectare plot is all that remains of their home. Faced with almost certain extinction the governments of Vietnam and the Netherlands joined forces with WWF to help save the Rhino from the jaws of obliteration. An extensive photo trap survey soon followed resulting in the first ever pictures of Vietnamese Javan Rhino in May 1999.

Three hours journey time out of the sprawling megalopolis of Ho Chi Minh City and the countryside is still heavily populated, but a blanket of undulating green tells us we are approaching the entrance to the National Park at Dong Nai river. The river, together with steep, dense bamboo and rattan have helped hide and save the Rhino thus far. Acting as a natural boundary and a deterrent to tourists and poachers alike. The only way in to the park is by a short boat ride.

During the week the National Park HQ plays host to researchers, conservationists and scientists from various parts of the globe. Together with the park rangers and office staff they make up a small community in the forest. Realising a Rhino sighting was an impossibility, I switched to Plan B. Deciding the very least I could do was try and find someone who had seen this fugitive figure of the forest. And it was among this disparate group of characters that I hoped to meet that person.

“You can see he's going for the infra-red sensor,” Gert said as he passed me a photo of a Rhino seemingly attacking part of the photo trap set up. One of the biggest problems in conducting the photo trapping research has been the fact that the Rhinos would often take a bite out of the expensive equipment. It’s thought that they take a disliking to the flash triggered on passing through the Infra-red beam. The problem is further confounded now as Rhino footprints have been found behind the sensors, but not through the beam indicating further sensitivity to any human presence in its last remaining range. But, as Gert went on to tell me, “We don't know why the Rhino attacks the sensor and not the camera.”

This became a recurrent theme, the more people I talked to about the Rhino the more the words ‘We don't know’ started to sound like an echo. The plain fact is very little is known about this animal.

The Javan Rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) in Vietnam is commonly known as the Vietnamese Rhino. And this sub-species is markedly different from those in Indonesia. A quick comparison immediately illustrates how much smaller the Vietnamese native is. This has made the process of identification of individual Rhinos very difficult. Normally researchers go on the size of the horn to determine sex and the size of the front hoof for age and individual identity. However, researchers can’t assume that what is true for one species follows for this relatively unknown sub-species. The current estimate of between 5 and 8 animals is based on the footprints.

I went in search of Dr Nguyen Xuan Dang of the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources in Hanoi who has been studying Rhinos since the late 80’s. Maybe he had seen the Rhino.

“We will know much more by the end of 2002,” he told me referring to a concentrated increase in Rhino research which got underway in May 2001 as part of a joint effort between WWF, AREAS, USFWS & IRF. Two special teams made up of 9 men, 6 forest guards and 3 tribesmen from the Chau Ma ethnic minority who have lived in the park all of their lives and are more familiar with the Rhino than anyone else. Over the coming year these special teams, aided with equipment and training, will collect dung samples for D.N.A testing, set more photo traps and catalogue footprints hopefully giving researchers the first accurate picture of the situation in Vietnam.

Dr. Nguyen Xuan Dang is responsible for the Vietnam Rhino Action Plan a major part of which affects a number of villages within the protected area. “Part of the plan is to resettle these people and give them agricultural land rights which they do not have now while they reside in the National Park. This is a delicate operation which will only go ahead when there is full agreement on all sides,” he told me. This essential part of the plan to extend habitation area for the Rhino should be completed over the next two years. But, had Dr. Nguyen Xuan Dang seen that which he had spent so much of his time protecting? “No, I haven't seen the Rhino, but I’d like to,” he replied.

Javan Rhinos in Ujung Kulon National Park have been photographed in the daytime. This is not the case in Vietnam meaning even fewer sightings. It is thought that a combination of human noise, grass cutting machinery, traffic and the limited range available in Cat Loc has turned the Rhino nocturnal.

“The important thing is to first stabilise the situation,” Gert Polet informed me. “ “A safe area is required first and hopefully the Rhino population can then start to grow again.” Not so long ago the forests around Cat Tien were much bigger, but human habitation and agriculture cut the park into the two distinct sections of Nam Cat Tien and Cat Loc trapping the Rhinos in the northern section of Cat Loc. With no natural corridor between the two parts of the park the current emphasis is on consolidating the situation in Cat Loc. The future hope being that too many Rhinos necessitates reintroduction into the Nam Cat Tien section. However, even with the amount of work being done the future of the Rhino hangs in the balance says Gert Polet, “If one Rhino is lost it could well be the end of the population.”

Javan Rhinos are known to be solitary living on a diet of shoots, twigs, fruits and, in Cat Tien at least, the abundant Rattan. A single calf is born after around 16 months in the womb and females are thought to breed only once every 4-5 years. The reproductive cycle is therefore very long. Mother nature further adding to the critical situation in Vietnam.

Gert's wife Ina Becker has been working on a Rhino Awareness Campaign for the past three years. Going around the schools and households in the surrounding area talking with kids and their families about the forest and its most famous inhabitant. “Everybody had heard about the Rhino of course, the old people saw them when they were young, but they'd never seen a picture of it,” Ina told me from her house in the park. Ina together with a local artist has put together a series of booklets incorporating the photo trap images which have helped increase awareness of the Rhino’s plight. And it’s not just the school children who read them as Ina told me, “One old lady came up to me and said ‘If I’d had this book earlier it would have been a lot better for the Rhino.’” The booklets include ideas on what people can do to help the Rhino.

Talking to Gert, Ina, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Dang and the park staff I couldn't help but feel how committed everyone was to the project. And no-one I spoke to was under any illusions, it is a long and formidable task with no promise of success. Hope did arrive recently though with the results of an 18 month survey in Ujung Kulon National Park and the discovery that four Rhino calves had been born in the past two years. Stories like that may be a long way off in Vietnam, but they do serve to inspire the men in the field.

“Two of the park guards got a fright earlier this year when they came across a Rhino,” Gert told me with a smile. “They dropped their gear and ran one way and the Rhino ran the other.” Only now, Rhinos in Vietnam have very few places to run to. “Can I meet these guards?” I asked Gert hopefully. “No, they're deep in the park and you can’t go there,” he reminded me. I knew what his response would be before I asked him, but I thought it was worth one final shot.

Crossing back over the Dong Nai River, on my return to the polluted sprawl of Ho Chi Minh City, something occurred to me as if emphasising the perilous existence of the Cat Tien Rhinos. Not only are your chances of seeing a Javan Rhino in Cat Tien zero, so are your chances of meeting someone who has. My mission might have failed, but for the sake of the Rhino it is hoped that the Park conservationists mission doesn't.

©2003 Graham Holliday

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