One Tree One

By Chai Mei Ling

TREES are to orang utans what roads are to humans. When we develop pockets of forests, humans cut off not just the primates’ connectivity to other parts of the woodland but also their food supply. CHAI MEI LING learns how a few ringgit can contribute to a tree-planting programme armed with the mammoth task of linking up those roads again.

If we think about trees … it’s something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides a habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy, makes complex sugars and food, creates micro-climates, self replicates.”

The above is a quote lifted off The 11th Hour, the latest environmental docudrama.

Beautiful, isn’t it, what a tree can do?

Even more amazing is a contribution as small as RM15 can put a tree in its rightful place, allowing it to perform just those wizardry, including building the orang utans’ home.

Forgo a cup of latte, two packets of cigarettes or this week’s pasar malam treat, and send that money to Boh and WWF’s Tea for Trees Restoring the Home of Orang Utans campaign.

Every RM15 sent means one tree is planted in the degraded forests of the lower Kinabatangan River, Sabah.

In many areas there, orang utans face not just food shortage with every disappearing tree, but also difficulty in getting to places where there are fruit-bearing trees.

Plantations and grasslands that dot the area are separating tracts of forests, further isolating these primates to certain forested area and cutting off their access to other forests where food can be found.

As arboreal animals who spend most of their lives in trees, orang utans can’t walk across these plains and estates.

These fruit eaters, confined to a specific spot, would soon run out of food and find that mating partners are few and far in between, which can result in inbreeding.

It was for this reason that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia and the Sabah Wildlife Department launched the Corridor of Life programme five years ago.

A tree-planting project was established to create a “corridor” that connects the forests.

“If we don’t open up the bottlenecks, the long-term effect is death. There will be a lot of inbreeding and the species’ need for food becomes a challenge,” says WWF-Malaysia executive director Datuk Dr Dionysius S.K. Sharma.

It took five years to reforest 16ha – an area slightly smaller than the Kuala Lumpur City Centre Park – and it’ll take a lot more years, effort, time and money to connect isolated forests, but it’s something that can be done, says Boh Plantations chief executive officer Caroline Russell.

“RM15 is a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of lots of drops. It’s by everyone making a small contribution that this can go a long way.”

So far, Malaysians have contributed RM10,500 to plant 700 trees in a one-day campaign in a shopping mall.

If you’d like to participate in this programme of hope and regeneration, log on to www.boh.com.my or www.wwfmalaysia.org for more information.

HOPE FOR THE RED APES

WWF-MALAYSIA has identified 3,000ha of Very High Priority and another 10,000ha of High Priority areas which require restoration in the Lower Kinabatangan.

Combined, they make up an area as big as Pulau Tioman, Pahang.

Thus far, the initiative – of which Boh Plantations is a partner in funding the setting up of nurseries – has replanted 10,000 trees on 16ha of land. They include langsat, rambutan, durian, mango and sengkuang trees.

The scale of what needs to be done is huge, says Caroline Russell of Boh.

“We’re talking about 3,000ha of high priority areas and so far, we’ve only done 16. This is a very, very small part but one has to be optimistic,” says Russell.

“For sustainability and for our children and their children, we have a responsibility in this generation to care for this unique ecosystem.”

Orang utans are the largest primate in the world found only in Borneo and Sumatra. Studies reported that by the early 1990s, orang utan habitats had decreased by 60 per cent.

Currently, it is estimated there are less than 30,000 orang utans in the world. Of this number, about 1,300 are in Sarawak and 11,000 in Sabah.

There are three reasons why orang utans have become endangered – they can only survive in extensive natural forests, their need for high quality foods and a variety of fruits, and their slow procreation.

Although the task is projected as a hope for the red apes, the planting of trees, especially figs will benefit a range of wildlife like hornbills and other primates.

“Orang utans are the flagship. They carry the day for all the species that will come to enjoy the regeneration of the forests.”

(c) 2008 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.