Kota Kinabalu: WWF-Malaysia Conservation Director Dr Henry Chan shed tears when mentioning the loss of Sabah’s Sumatran Rhinoceros in his keynote address on “State of Conservation and the Way Forward” at the Plenary III session of WWF-Malaysia 50th Anniversary conference Thursday.
Aimed at reversing the decline of nature and transforming Malaysia into a sustainable nation by 2030, the audience at the event held at the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Resort with the theme of “50 Years Together With Nature”, gave Dr Chan a thunderous applause for his brief emotional breakdown.
As recorded in the WWF-Malaysia published book “Wildlife Atlas of Sabah” edited by Glyn Davies, in collaboration with Sabah Biodiversity Centre and launched at the function, the Sumatran Rhinoceros went extinct in Malaysia in 2019 when the last named Iman died in Tabin.