1,000 orangutans disappear each year: Survey
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post/Medan
A survey by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP) found at least 1,000 orangutans in North Sumatra and Aceh provinces are disappearing each year due to poaching and loss of habitat.
According to the SOCP, there are only about 7,518 orangutans, 55 percent of them adult males, remaining in Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, from tens of thousands of orangutans in the 1980s. About 10 percent of the remaining orangutans are young males and females still being nurtured by their mothers.
SOCP scientific director Ian Singleton expressed concern on Saturday the wild orangutan population would continue to dwindle due to the increased pace of forest destruction, particularly in the Leuser ecosystem.
Singleton, a British national who has done extensive research on orangutans in Sumatra, said that like any other animals, the orangutan relied on the forest for survival.
"Orangutans prefer to dwell in forests 1,000 meters above sea level because of the quality of fruits there," Singleton said.
In addition to forest destruction, rampant poaching is also a contributing factor to the disappearance of the orangutan, he said.
Singleton said that at the 21 orangutan location points in Aceh and North Sumatra, many of the orangutan populations were below 500. The smallest population is in Linge, western Aceh, where the orangutan population is only eight. In Tapanuli, North Sumatra, the population is 500.
He said that only the area of Aceh Singkil, along the western and eastern parts of Leuser, had an orangutan population of over 1,000.
"We have been conducting surveys for the past 15 years to get to these locations, at once inputting data on their populace. This survey involves many foreign and local researchers, and from the surveys, we conclude that each year at least 1,000 orangutans vanish," Singleton told The Jakarta Post.
The outreach and education manager at the SOCP, Anna Pombo, said her office was working to guarantee the continued existence of orangutans in the wild.
Since its founding in 1999, the SOCP has established an orangutan quarantine center in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, and a reintroduction center in Bukit Tigapuluh, Jambi, Pombo said.
She said that in the last two years, the quarantine center had handled 53 orangutans that were seized by the authorities or entrusted to the center by various related agencies. As many as 36 of them have been sent to the reintroduction center in Jambi.
"This conservation program is part of our efforts to preserve the orangutans and their habitat from threats of extinction. If their population is not stabilized, we will lose them in a decade's time," said Pombo.