Today, the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is critically endangered, with fewer than 100 individuals surviving in Indonesia on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. To ensure survival of the threatened species, accurate censusing is necessary to determine the genetic diversity of remaining populations for conservation and management plans.

The little-known and smallest member of the rhinoceros family, the Sumatran rhinoceros, is critically endangered. Today between 30 and 100 are isolated on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia. In a new study, researchers urge conservationists to translocate the two island groups—representing two subspecies of the Sumatran rhino—and to create a cell bank to preserve the genetic diversity uncovered by this work.