The first live sighting in 2016 of a Sumatran rhinoceros in Kalimantan, the Indonesia part of Borneo, was a major milestone for Rhino conservation in Indonesia, as it was thought to be extinct there. The female Sumatran rhino, which is estimated to be between four and five years old, was safely captured in a pit trap in Kutai Barat in East Kalimantan on 12 March.

(Source: WWF Press Release, 28.03.2013; WWF Indonesia press release, 23.03.2016) In 2013, a WWF survey team first found evidence that the species was not extinct in Kalimantan by identifying footprints and capturing an image of a rhino on a camera trap in the same forest. Since then, 15 Sumatran rhinos have been identified in three populations in Kutai Barat.

The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is the smallest of the two rhino species that exist in Indonesia, and listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. The other one being the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus), which only survives in Ujung Kulon National Park and is Critically Endangered as well. It is estimated that less than 100 Sumatran rhinos remain in the wild, mainly on the island of Sumatra. The rhinos face serious threats from poaching, and habitat loss due to mining, plantations and logging. The wild population of Sumatran rhinos in the Malaysian part of Borneo was declared extinct in 2015.