Those words sprung to mind when I first met a Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) after traversing the maze of wooden slatted paths at the conservation centre in the dense, humid forests of Malaysian Borneo.
It was 1998 and I was an eager student volunteer at the centre. At that time, 300 Sumatran rhinos were thought to exist globally.
I saw this female rhino as a symbol of conservation hope. But today, according to the International Rhino Foundation’s 2026 State of the Rhino report, less than 50 Sumatran rhinos remain. All are found in Indonesia. The Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) is just as rare.
While these figures rely on estimates, the trajectory is alarming.
So what is driving this decline? And how can we protect the few Sumatran and Javan rhinos that are left?
Their ubiquity in popular culture may lead us to underestimate the urgency of their plight. Species used as marketing emblems are often considered more common than they truly are.
There are five surviving species of rhinos. I have had the privilege of getting to know all but one while working as a wildlife veterinarian in zoos, sanctuaries and the wild.
Africa is home to white and black rhinos, whose populations have fluctuated greatly throughout history. The water-loving greater one-horned rhino lives in India and Nepal and has seen a steady recovery from near extinction in the early 1900s. These three species can be found in zoos and tend to get the most public attention.
Compared to their African and Indian relatives, Sumatran and Javan rhinos typically fly under the radar. However, their critically endangered status signals these animals are in urgent need of assistance.
A southern white rhino in Kruger National Park, located in northeastern South Africa.Utopia_88/Getty
The rarest rhinos
According to the latest State of the Rhino report, the future of the elusive Javan rhino and the small, hairy Sumatran rhino is now especially precarious. Distribution is a major reason why.
There are roughly 50 surviving Javan rhinos. All live in a single protected area, Ujung Kulon National Park on the island of Java. Due to nearby converging tectonic plates, it is vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. One natural disaster could well exterminate the Javan rhino population.
In contrast, the several dozen remaining Sumatran rhinos are scattered into many subpopulations, across two islands. This means the chance of a wild individual rhino encountering another of their kind is remote or even impossible. With no prospect of finding a compatible mate, isolated survivors are destined to be the end of their genetic line.
There are an estimated 50 Javan rhinos left in the Ujung Kulon National Park.Toby Nowlan/Getty
The sanctuary is currently home to ten intensively managed, semi-captive Sumatran rhinos. The resident animals live in large, natural rainforest habitats. They are provided with nutrition, security and regular veterinary care.
Increasing rhino numbers through natural or assisted breeding requires patience. Females give birth to a single calf after about 16 months of pregnancy. It may be several years before they have another. Infertility is a recognised problem in some rhinos.
The sanctuary has had some hard-won successes. Five Sumatran rhino calves were born there between 2012 and 2023, in part due to close reproductive management and monitoring. Excitingly, authorities have just announced two new pregnancies.
Camera-trap footage has also confirmed the births of up to five Javan rhino calves in Ujung Kulon in recent years. These precious births go some way towards recovery of these two species.
The Indonesian island of Sumatra is known for its lush green grasslands, tropical forest and calm waters.Andri Munazir/Getty
The perils of poaching
Poaching is a persistent threat to all rhino species. Worryingly, global demand for rhino horn is increasing, especially in China and Vietnam. Besides its long-standing use in traditional medicine, rhino horn now plays a role in demonstrating wealth and status, particularly in business circles. Poachers killed as many as 26 Javan rhinos between 2019 and 2023 alone.
Anti-poaching strategies include behaviour change campaigns, which focus on promoting social and cultural unacceptability of horn use and purchase. Governments may also rely on intelligence-led law enforcement and disruption to large crime syndicates to stop poachers. While poaching convictions and court sentences are increasing, including in Indonesia, this is not enough to keep the world’s rhinos safe.
Proactive measures, such as protecting and restoring habitat suitable for each species, are vital to the recovery of rhino populations. This is particularly true as humans increasingly encroach on wild places.
Poachers kill rhinos for their horns, which they then sell through the illegal wildlife trade.Neil Aldridge/Getty
Where to from here
Translocation – capturing and then releasing animals in a new place – is one possible way of protecting the world’s rhinos. Recent research examined whether this strategy could be used to re-establish populations of Sumatran and Javan rhinos across their former range throughout Southeast Asia. Conservation authorities can learn from past translocations of African rhinos, which show finding suitable habitat, anti-poaching protection and careful planning are crucial to the success of these efforts.
More broadly, effective rhino conservation relies on having an army of supporters. Local communities should tangibly benefit from living alongside rhinos, for example through job creation and by sharing in the proceeds of ecotourism. Even from afar, people can help by supporting conservation organisations and avoiding the purchase of products that contribute to tropical deforestation.
Sustainable funding and political commitment are crucial to protecting the few Indonesian rhinos that remain. It’s my wish that younger generations, including my future students, have the privilege of meeting a small, hairy rhinoceros for themselves.
Michelle Campbell-Ward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has declared it is “important that Pacific voices are heard” after landing in Fiji on Monday to attend his first UN climate summit since becoming prime minister more than four years ago.
Albanese joined about 4,000 people in Nadi for a preparatory meeting for the year-ending Cop31 UN climate summit in Turkey while facing criticism from his political opponents at home. Pre-Cop meetings are usually small and bureaucratic affairs, but this meeting has a double purpose: it is being held in the Pacific after Australia and regional leaders argued it would help bring global attention to the plight of countries most at risk from the climate crisis.
While the case of a whale found 11km upstream in a New South Wales river this weekend was unusual, it was not unprecedented, experts say.
The juvenile humpback, which swam into the Clarence River on the state’s mid-north coast and later died, was towed out to sea on Sunday, according to NSW authorities.
Also remarkable is the amount of carbon these trees hold. Large kauri have gradually accumulated enormous amounts of biomass, leaving great quantities of carbon stored in their trunks, branches and roots.
Over the past two decades, however, these giants of our forests have faced a growing threat from kauri dieback.
The disease is caused by the soil-borne water mould Phytophthora agathidicida, which infects kauri through their roots and disrupts their ability to take up water and nutrients. As it progresses, trees can lose foliage and branches and eventually die.
The toll has been significant. Hundreds to thousands of kauri across New Zealand’s upper North Island have died, with some of the heaviest losses recorded in Northland and Auckland’s Wait?kere Ranges.
As dieback spreads and affected trees decline, some of the carbon held in their living biomass is lost from that store – with direct implications for carbon sequestration and the broader health of these forest ecosystems.
Our latest research sheds some new light on these important impacts.
Tracking a decade of change
To build a clearer picture, we visited study plots in kauri forests in the Wait?kere Ranges that had first been surveyed between 2011 and 2014.
Our study co-author, Toby Elliot, revisited the plots to measure the trees again, assess the condition of their canopies and record which had died or become established. We then used the size of each tree, along with the typical wood density of each species, to estimate how much living biomass the plots contained.
This allowed us to see how the amount of carbon stored in living vegetation had changed over about a decade.
We found that the more severe the kauri dieback, the less carbon forests gained through tree growth – and the more they lost as trees declined and died.
The difference was notable. For forest stands starting with an average 169 tonnes of carbon per hectare, healthy stands gained about 0.8 tonnes per hectare each year. Those showing signs of dieback instead lost about 0.1 tonnes, while severely affected stands lost around one tonne per hectare each year.
That amounts to a shift of about 1.8 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year between healthy and severely affected forest.
The reason is relatively simple. Healthy trees keep growing and accumulating carbon. Dieback slows that growth and, when trees eventually die, the carbon they contained is no longer part of the forest’s living vegetation.
When the biggest trees are lost
The largest changes occurred in forests that initially contained the most carbon – mature kauri forests with large trees that have accumulated carbon over many decades or centuries.
In our study, mature forest plots held an average of about 248 tonnes of living carbon per hectare, compared with about 88 tonnes in younger, regenerating forest.
Kauri themselves accounted for a particularly large share of this store. Where kauri were present, our modelling estimated they contributed, on average, about half of the living carbon, with their contribution becoming greater in more carbon-rich forests.
This means the impact of kauri dieback depends on which trees die, as well as how many. When a large kauri dies, the amount of carbon removed from the living vegetation pool can be significant.
Our modelling also suggests severely affected, carbon-rich stands can shift from accumulating carbon to losing it. These forests may not regain their previous carbon stocks, instead eventually stabilising with less living biomass and a reduced capacity to store and accumulate carbon.
This makes protecting mature kauri forests particularly important for maintaining the carbon stored in these ecosystems.
Where does the carbon go?
Our study measured carbon only in living vegetation, capturing just one part of the larger carbon cycle.
Because we did not directly measure carbon in dead wood, litter and soils, we cannot determine how much of the carbon lost from living vegetation ultimately remains stored elsewhere in the ecosystem, or how quickly it is returned to the atmosphere.
Longer-term measurements of these other potential stores will be needed to track where this carbon goes – and how that changes as kauri mortality increases.
Protecting kauri from dieback therefore has implications beyond the survival of individual trees.
Management approaches designed to slow disease progression and reduce symptoms, such as phosphite treatments, are being investigated and applied as part of broader kauri protection efforts.
In the meantime, preventing the spread of dieback disease remains something visitors can help with: staying on marked tracks and thoroughly cleaning footwear when entering and leaving kauri forests.
Doing so helps protect kauri as taonga – and the ecological functions of forests that have taken centuries to develop.
The authors acknowledge the support of Te Kawerau ? Maki in this research.
Pin Jia Chan received research funding for this work from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and support from the Lucy Cranwell Student Grant for Botanical Research.
Luitgard Schwendenmann received research funding for this work from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
In an election centred on New Zealand’s cost-of-living crisis, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see parties return to a familiar idea for tackling rising power bills: breaking up the big electricity gentailers.
Both New Zealand First and the Greens want to split the big gentailers into separate generation and retail businesses.
The appeal is straightforward. If independent retailers could buy electricity on fairer terms, the argument goes, greater competition should bring household power prices down.
And prices are rising. The Electricity Authority found households and small businesses paid an average 6.8% more for electricity in the first half of 2026. But more than half of that increase came from higher network charges, with generation costs and retail margins accounting for much of the rest.
National, meanwhile, has focused its latest energy policy on those network costs, promising to review how lines companies are regulated.
But it hasn’t gone as far as breaking up the gentailers – something Finance Minister Nicola Willis has argued would create “massive instability”.
I have studied this area for decades. A review I conducted indeed points to some easily overlooked consequences of separating the two.
Why generation and retail go together
Combining generation and retailing gives electricity companies a critical advantage: protection against swings in wholesale power prices.
A gentailer can supply customers from its own generation, while buying or selling electricity on the wholesale market only as needed. A standalone retailer, by contrast, must secure all of its customers’ electricity through purchases or contracts.
That becomes important when wholesale prices surge because hydro lakes are low, gas is scarce or demand is high. A retailer charging households a relatively stable price can see its costs soar while its revenue does not.
Long-term contracts can reduce that exposure, but suitable cover can be costly or incomplete. Owning generation provides another way to manage the risk, because generation costs do not necessarily rise with wholesale prices.
This is more than a theoretical concern. During Britain’s wholesale energy shock of 2021-22, 29 suppliers failed, with weak finances and inadequate protection against rising prices leaving some particularly vulnerable.
From the cost of living and a health system under extreme pressure to the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and how best to tackle climate change, the coming election involves some big choices.
This article is part of The Conversation’s Election 2026 series: expert analysis of the major policy debates and the big challenges New Zealand’s next government will face.
New Zealand experienced something similar in 2001, when surging wholesale prices prompted Natural Gas Corporation to sell its electricity customers to generators. During California’s 2000-01 electricity crisis, separation and contracting limits also left major utilities exposed to soaring wholesale prices.
The same issue can influence investment. New generation requires substantial upfront capital and years of revenue, while retailers need dependable electricity supplies.
Combining generation and retail can give investors a ready customer base and reduce uncertainty. Separating them means those relationships must instead be established through contracts that are much less effective.
My research also suggests integration can encourage investment because more efficient generation can strengthen a company’s position in the retail market.
There is another, less obvious effect that a co-author and I have studied: wholesale price impacts. A generator with a retail arm knows higher wholesale prices can hurt that side of its business when it needs to buy electricity. A generator only selling into the wholesale market does not face the same constraint.
Separation could therefore increase incentives to seek higher wholesale prices, even as it creates more retail competition.
There is also the risk of two sets of mark-ups. If generators and retailers separately add a margin to the same electricity, customers ultimately pay both. Economists call this “double marginalisation”, which integration can avoid.
None of this means gentailers necessarily charge fair prices, or that greater competition could not benefit consumers. But any gains from breaking them up need to be weighed against the effects on risk, investment and wholesale prices.
Would more competition really mean lower bills?
Integration can make it harder for standalone retailers to compete. But measures that help independent retailers do not necessarily leave consumers better off.
A recent OECD review backed measures to help independent electricity retailers. But its example of international “best practice” involves separating monopoly electricity networks – the poles and wires – from businesses operating in competitive parts of the market. This prevents owners of essential infrastructure favouring related businesses over competitors.
Breaking up gentailers is different because generation and retailing are both competitive businesses.
The Electricity Authority has already introduced “level playing field” rules governing gentailers’ contracts with independent retailers. My analysis found such rules can benefit standalone retailers while leaving other firms and consumers worse off.
The authority considered concerns about possible consumer harm when introducing the rules, but ultimately rejected them. Their effects should be judged by what happens to bills, security of supply and investment – not simply whether more retailers enter.
The research I have reviewed and undertaken suggests forced separation is more likely to harm than help consumers.
That puts the onus on those proposing a break-up. How would separate firms manage wholesale price risk and sustain investment? Would greater retail competition outweigh the risk of higher wholesale prices and cascading profit margins?
More retailers may mean more retail competition. But the real test is whether restructuring the market delivers lower prices overall, and a more secure electricity supply.
Richard Meade was funded in 2021 by an industry body representing New Zealand electricity gentailers and retailers to survey the economic literature on vertical integration versus vertical separation in electricity sectors. In 2025 he submitted on his own account to the Electricity Authority on its proposal to force generator-retailers to offer supply to rivals on non-discriminatory terms.
