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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2015)
September 7, 2015 U.S.A. THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7 Inside Boise’s battle with the Japanese beetle By Zach Kyle Idaho Statesman B MISSING IN MALAYSIA. Harapan, a Sumatran rhino, enters his Wildlife Canyon at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Harapan, or “Harry,” the only Sumatran rhino in the Western Hemisphere and one of three calves born at the Cincinnati Zoo, will soon be moved to Indonesia to breed at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary. (Cara Owsley/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP) U.S. zoo to send endangered rhino to Indonesia to mate By Dan Sewell The Associated Press C INCINNATI — A zoo that has the last Sumatran rhino in the United States has announced plans to send him to Southeast Asia on a mission to mate and help preserve his critically endangered species. Conservation experts at the Cincinnati Zoo say eight-year-old Harapan could be on his way soon to Indonesia, where nearly all of the estimated 100 remaining Sumatran rhinos live. Numbers of the two-horned descendants of Ice Age woolly rhinos have fallen by some 90 percent since the mid-1980s as development of their Southeast Asia forest habitat and poachers seeking their prized horns took their toll. Cincinnati’s zoo has been a pioneer in breeding the species, also called “hairy rhinos,” producing the first three born in captivity in modern times. Harapan will join the eldest, Andalas, who has been in Indonesia since 2007 and has produced one male offspring. Andalas turns 14 this month. Roth said final details and permits are still being worked out so the transfer timetable is uncertain. It’s expected Harapan will be flown to Jakarta, then taken by ferry to his ancestral island home of Sumatra. Bambang Dahono Adji, director of biodiversity conservation at Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said preparations are underway at a rhino sanctuary at Way Kambas National Park in southern Sumatra, and hopefully Harapan will arrive by early October at the latest. Indonesia has said it does not want to be Arnold A. Lim December 24, 1972 - September 11, 2001 We love you | We miss you You are forever in our thoughts dependent on other countries in conserva- tion efforts by sending rhinos to be bred abroad. However, it says it welcomes any technological or scientific assistance for the Sumatran rhino breeding program. Veteran zoo rhino keeper Paul Reinhart will accompany Harapan. He and others will work with the rhino, who already has travelled across the U.S., to condition him to being in a crate for the long flight. Harapan and Andalas’s sister Suci died from illness last year at the zoo, after the Cincinnati conservationists had discussed trying to mate the siblings in a desperation move. Dahono from Indonesia’s environment and forestry ministry said Suci may have died because her diet at the zoo contained too much iron, and expressed concern that Harapan could face the same fate. “The conclusion of experts is that Harapan has to be saved,” Dahono said. “Therefore, we are insisting on getting Harapan back to its original habitat here rather than having it live alone there.” “We don’t want to see anymore premature deaths of rhinos,” he added. “We don’t want Harapan to become a second Suci.” Harapan was brought back to Cincinnati two years ago after being on loan to the Los Angeles Zoo. He also spent time in Florida’s White Oak conservation center. He will join Andalas at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, where he lives with three females and his one male offspring, born in 2012, on the Indonesia island. With three Sumatran rhinos in a sanctuary in Malaysia plus Harapan, there are only nine in captivity globally. Some scientists recently concluded that there are no more Sumatran rhinos living in the wild in Malaysia. Conservationists and government officials met in Singapore in 2013 for a Sumatran Rhino Crisis Summit to discuss increasing action to protect the species. Environment ministry officials in South Africa, home to most of the world’s remaining rhinos overall, reported a total of 393 rhino poachings through April, an increase of more than 20 percent over the same period in 2014. Rhino advocates believe the losses are even higher. South Africa has struggled to counter poaching syndicates cashing in on high demand for rhino horns in parts of Asia where some people claim they have medicinal properties for treating everything from hangovers to cancer. Associated Press writer Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report. OISE, Idaho (AP) — Paul Castro- villo first started chasing the Japanese beetle in third or fourth grade in the mid-1960s, catching and collecting them on rose bushes in his New Jersey backyard along with butterflies and whatever other bugs were around. He researched them, learning about their diet and life cycle. He occasionally roasted one with his magnifying glass. The Japanese beetle was not then the top insect threat in Idaho, as it is today. But it had already infested most of the eastern quarter of the U.S., chewing through grass, plants, and crops as its population skyrocketed. The metallic green beetles were not a problem in Idaho until 2012, when 61 were collected in traps set by the Idaho Department of Agriculture, all in Boise’s Warm Springs neighborhood. The state set more traps and found more than 3,000 beetles the next summer. Not wanting to become another New Jersey, Idaho looked for a bug expert to battle the beetles. They found Castrovillo, who, among other jobs, had worked in the research and development department of Micron for 19 years after graduating from the University of Idaho with a Ph.D. in entomology in 1982. He had the degrees for the job, as well as experience collecting, identifying, and archiving more than 30,000 specimens for The College of Idaho’s natural history museum in Caldwell. He did that on weekends and vacation days over 20 years as he set traps and swung butterfly nets. Castrovillo told department officials he had waited more than 30 years for such an opportunity. “I’ve been doing this out of sheer love,” Castrovillo said. “If you’re looking for somebody to do this as an 8-to-5 job. I’d love to have it.” Most kids go through a phase where they take interest in the fantastic, often alien- like bugs in their backyard, Castrovillo said. “Every once in a while, you get a kid like me, who 60 years later hasn’t grown out of it.” Castrovillo was always partial to moths BOISE’S BEETLE BATTLE. Japanese beetles are seen in the office of Paul Castrovillo in Boise, Ida- ho. Castrovillo says the pest could become a problem for farmers if it migrates out of Boise. (Katherine Jones/Idaho Statesman via AP) and butterflies, such as the ones pinned in specimen boxes in his office. He still hopes to find a rock crawler, a rare bug living in cold, high-elevation habitats that some say will die if exposed to the heat of a human hand. But he remembered the Japanese beetle well. “It’s kind of like seeing an old friend,” he said. Today, Castrovillo works near the epicenter of the beetle outbreak in the department’s office on Old Penitentiary Road, off Warm Springs Avenue. Two small boxes full of shiny specimens pinned in neat rows decorate his desk. Maps of Boise marking many of the 2,500 traps set in the city decorate the walls. Castrovillo and his team are in the third year of applying pesticides to select public and private properties in areas showing the highest Japanese beetle concentra- tions. The treatments, which take effect after a year, have been successful, knocking the beetle count to 329 across the city this summer, on pace for a reduction of 72 percent from last summer and 91 percent since 2013. The traps measure the presence and density of Japanese beetle populations in neighborhoods, but they don’t attract enough to eradicate the pest. The state budgeted $400,000 in each of the past two years for the Japanese beetle Continued on page 9 New to your neighborhood: A love letter to African America Continued from page 6 sharing our sorrows and joys, our brown and black families will daily acquiesce to institutionally conditioned ways of reacting to each other. Institutional avenues simply inadequate to carry all the historical and cultural complexities each of us owns. Miserably inadequate. This is really bad, because these racialized systems — America’s educa- tional, financial, social, and law-enforce- ment systems — have failed to com- passionately integrate black and white families. After 150 years of trying. After Presidents Lincoln and Johnson and Obama trying. You and me expecting these staid institutions to conscientiously integrate black and our many brown ethnic streams into a shared American mainstream, is only asking for more heartbreak. What we ask of you The neighborhood and workfloor relationships necessary for you and me to circumvent these systems don’t exist yet. Not here. In fact, the opposite is true. New Americans quickly back away from black and white America’s living history. From a bitterness so rutted into this otherwise blessed continent’s face, that not a lot of Arabs or Asians, Pacific or Caribbean islanders, Spanish- or Russian-speakers, dare get near its edge. Cuts dark as Martian canals. Scars clearly visible from space. So we better start here, suadara saudara hitam manis (dear black brothers and sisters). With this love letter, just between us. Even better would be love less rushed, but there’s a tectonic demographic shift rocking our shared continent. The U.S. treasury and misery squandered segre- gating you, are small compared to what we’ll all pay to contain immigrant America’s school kids, our workers, our voters, our prayers. We best start now, blending dreamers brought from our world over, with African- America’s solid moral authority. We will ask your enslaved ancestors to bless us with their dignity. We will ask your civil- rights elders to include us in their Sunday mornings. Once we’re properly introduced, maybe our institutional leaders will feel free to acknowledge immigrant America. And maybe this will free up all that kind- ness and creativity sequestered some- where deep inside the North American continent. Please let us know your thoughts. Please let us get to work. Love, Your new neighbor