Orang-Utan Rescue – in the Heart of Borneo

BEETHOVEN flatly refuses to come down from his nest high up in the trees.

He’s been sitting up there for more than an hour eating some fruit,

barely paying attention to his many adorning fans down below on the

ground.

Beethoven is a Borneo orang-utan and is used to visitors coming to his

home at the recently protected Sebangau National Park, located in the

southern part of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province.

His movements are also being closely watched by researchers, dedicated

to the conservation of this threatened species whose forest habitat is

being destroyed at a rapid rate throughout Southeast Asia.

“We are studying this ape species to see what effect deforestation is

having on its population,” said primate expert Simon Husson.

The British biologist and his wife have spent the last 10 years living

in an Indonesian peat forest to study orang-utans as part of the

Orang-utan Tropical Peatland Project (OuTrop), an independent research

and conservation project.

“When we first came here in 1995, there were still about 13,000

orang-utans,” Husson added.

“But as a result of intensive logging, their habitat has shrunk and

they have ended up packed together in this small area.

“Luckily, the population still living in the forest seems to be

managing.”

Today, there are about 6,900 orang-utans in Sebangau National Park, one

of the largest known populations.

Miriam van Gool, responsible for global programmes and policy at WWF in

the Netherlands, has been involved with the orang-utan project in

Sebangau from the start.

The first time she visited the area, about three years ago, the

situation was in dire straits.

Boats were towing rafts of illegally-felled logs on the Sebangau River

and endless stacks of logs lay awaiting transport.

Why invest in an area that looked like it was already under an

environmental death sentence?

“The region is sick but not dead yet,” said van Gool.

“Sebangau and the neighbouring region of Mawas have extremely important

peat bog forests and orang-utan populations.

“A great deal of them can still be saved.”

According to WWF, there are about 10,000 orang-utans living between

Sebangau and Mawas, about one-fifth of the world’s orang-utan population.

Thanks to the work of van Gool and others, Sebangau was declared a

national park last October in a last ditch effort to save the forests and

their inhabitants.

With a current deforestation rate of 1.3 million hectares per year – an

area equivalent to about one third of the size of Switzerland – the rate

is likely to rise due to pressure from a growing domestic population and

the needs of international markets.

Said Dr Chris Elliott, director of WWF’s Global Forest Programme: “The

consequences of this scale of deforestation will not only result in a

major loss of species but also disrupt water supplies and reduce future

economic opportunities, such as tourism and subsistence for local

communities.”

One of the main problems the Sebangau area has been facing is the

destruction of fragile peat forests, particularly as a result of loggers

digging wide channels to tow away logs during the rainy season.

Because of increased drainage, the peat forest is drying out and is

more prone to forest fires during the dry season.

Peat forests are found in parts of Africa and South America, and in

large areas of Southeast Asia, especially Borneo and Sumatra.

These swamp forests appear in places where dead vegetation becomes

waterlogged and accumulates as peat, which acts as a sort of sponge that

withholds moisture at times of little rainfall and absorbs monsoon rains.

When peat swamp forests are drained for logging purposes or

agricultural projects, they become highly susceptible to combustion.

Under the dry el Nino conditions of 1997-98, thousands of fires raged

throughout the peat swamps of Indonesia.

WWF, together with the local government and other organisations,

including OuTrop and Wetlands International, has begun to close the

canals with dams to control the damage.

“We hope this will decrease the chances of forest fires in this area

and at the same time protect the orang-utans habitat,” van Gool said.

* Jonkman is a Press officer with WWF-Netherlands