Food shortages drive orangutans to the brink

Food shortages drive orangutans to the brink

By Iskandar Zulkarnaen

SAMARINDA, East Kalimantan (Antara): The food crisis as a result of the long drought is now affecting not only the people, but also animals.

Some 2,000 orangutans in East Kalimantan are suffering because forest trees are failing to bear fruit, the orangutans' primary food source. Worse, parts of the area have been totally devastated by forest fires.

Orangutans, which can weigh up to 100 kilograms each, also eat the shoots and leaves of certain trees. The orangutans' habitat in this province has shrunk considerably as a result of the fires, which were brought under control some time ago but which have started raging again. The plight of orangutans, so to speak, has doubled.

Fires have burned down the shoots of trees in the forests in Kutai National Park, Bontang. Some 45,000 hectares of the park's 200,000 hectares have been destroyed by the fires.

Therefore, not infrequently, starving orangutans have traveled to local people's plantations. Last month, a group of hungry orangutans ravaged plantations in a settlement in Separi, Kutai.

Supiani, 42, a resident of the settlement, had to be hospitalized at the AH Wahab Syharanie General Hospital, Samarinda, because he lost some of his fingers in a "fight" with a starving orangutan.

The former security guard with a well-built body said he never suspected that an orangutan would suddenly go wild and attack him while he was trying to put out the fire around his plantation.

The female orangutan and its young, aged less than a year, must have left their habitat in the park when it was burning. While Supiani, originally from South Kalimantan, and other locals were trying to put out the fire, the orangutan and its young suddenly came out from behind a bush and ran after him.

The attack was totally unexpected, and Supiani took to his heels. Unfortunately, he stumbled into a hole and the orangutan started biting his legs.

To save himself, Supiani fought back as best he could. "The orangutan was really fierce. Luckily, a friend of mine, Mul, came to help. Otherwise, I would have lost my life," he said.

Mul helped him by hitting the orangutan with a piece of wood. Then came 20 villagers. Together with Mul, they attacked the mother and baby orangutan, finally killing them when Mul mortally wounded them with his broad sword.

Tragically, after killing them, the locals ate them. "We really regret this," said Dr. Willie Smits, a worker at the ministry of forestry assigned to handle orangutans.

Smits, from the Netherlands, works for the Wanariset Orangutan Resque and Rehabilitation Center at Semboja Research Center, East Kalimantan, said that at least 60 orangutans are known to be roaming around the settlement because of the food crisis.

"Orangutans are quiet by nature and will not attack humans unless they really have to," said Smits, an expert on orangutans.

He surmises that this particular orangutan became wild because of hunger.

The Semboja Research Center has now assigned a team of five people to save scores of orangutans now at large in the area.

"As the fires have ravaged the area extensively, conditions are now worsening. Some 20 orangutans have been found roaming around Wahau, Sangatta and Sebulu," Smits said.

"The drought and the forest fires have made both orangutans and locals vie for the food from the plantations. The locals need the food at this critical time and the orangutans have no more food in the forest," he said.

He went on to say that to date, five orangutans have been killed by locals, one was found in an appalling condition due to fire-inflicted wounds and seven have attempted to run away from Kutai National Park but are now in good hands, although they were severely wounded because of pig traps set by locals.

As the five killed by locals were female orangutans with young, their young must have also lost their lives, he said.

He said if the drought continues, it is very likely that 2,000 orangutans in East Kalimantan will die.

One of the ways to handle the orangutans is to release them into the Meratus mountain area, Central Kalimantan. So far, 80 orangutans have been released there. It will take three years, at a cost of Rp 3 million per head, to rehabilitate orangutans and release them into the wild.

To ensure that funds will be available for this project, the minister of forestry has introduced a foster parent program under which each donator may adopt one orangutan or more.

Former forestry minister Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands are two foster parents of this rare animal.

According to an evaluation of the forest/land fires in East Kalimantan made early March 1998, other victims of the fires are deer, small antelopes and other animals, most of which are found in the park.

The drought, which has affected some 30,000 hectares of agricultural land in East Kalimantan, has not only brought about a food crisis to some 150,000 people in 25 subdistricts in Kutai but also threatened the sustainability of the orangutans.

Nevertheless, it is not proper to kill orangutans simply because they have come to the plantations for food.

"This animal is threatened with extinction and instinctively tries to survive. Slaughtering orangutans may become a bad precedent to the commitment of protecting nature and its ecosystem," Smits said.

However, locals in the rural areas, who have been hard hit by the present monetary crisis, find it difficult to think about conservation and protection because to some of them, this is the job of "office people".