Javan Rhinoceros - Distribution and Habitat

Distribution and Habitat

Even the most optimistic estimate suggests fewer than 100 Javan rhinos remain in the wild. They are considered one of the most endangered species in the world. The Javan rhinoceros is known to survive in only one place, the Ujung Kulon National Park on the western tip of Java.

The animal was once widespread from Assam and Bengal (where their range would have overlapped with both the Sumatran and Indian rhinos) eastward to Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and southwards to the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Java, and possibly Borneo. The Javan rhino primarily inhabits dense, lowland rain forests, grasslands, and reed beds with abundant rivers, large floodplains, or wet areas with many mud wallows. Although it historically preferred low-lying areas, the subspecies in Vietnam was pushed onto much higher ground (up to 2,000 m or 6,561 ft), probably because of human encroachment and poaching.

The range of the Javan rhinoceros has been shrinking for at least 3,000 years. Starting around 1000 BC, the northern range of the rhinoceros extended into China, but began moving southward at roughly 0.5 km (0.31 mi) per year, as human settlements increased in the region. It likely became locally extinct in India in the first decade of the 20th century. The Javan rhino was hunted to extinction on the Malay Peninsula by 1932. By the end of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese rhinoceros was believed extinct across all of mainland Asia. Local hunters and woodcutters in Cambodia claim to have seen Javan rhinos in the Cardamom Mountains, but surveys of the area have failed to find any evidence of them. In the late 1980s, a small population was found in the Cat Tien area of Vietnam. However, the last individual of that population was shot in 2010. A population may have existed on the island of Borneo as well, though these specimens could have been the Sumatran rhinoceros, a small population of which still lives there.