Illegal logging a threat to Sumatra's orangutans

Illegal logging a threat to Sumatra's orangutans

By Bernard Estrade

JAKARTA (AFP): One of the world's most important research
centers on orangutans, in the north of the huge Indonesian island
of Sumatra, is under threat from massive illegal logging which
authorities seem unable to stop.

"Yesterday chainsaws were felling trees along the river at the
base camp. We could see some of the trees falling and heard trees
crashing down at a rate of one every three to four minutes."

That alarm was sounded in a letter in the form of an appeal
for help written by Michelle Merrill, an American student doing
research on orangutans in Suaq, in the Leuser national park.

In the whole of Sumatra there are only 7,000 to 11,000
orangutans. The primates are one of the world's most endangered
species, threatened by poaching but mostly by deforestation and
the disappearance of their habitat.

Unlike others of their species who are solitary, the big
ginger-haired primates in the Suaq region live in structured
social groups, and are remarkable for their extraordinary ability
to make and use tools.

Though it is generally acknowledged the use of tools
differentiates man from animals, the orangutans of Suaq often use
tools -- sticks wrapped with hair to trap termites in tree
hollows, and spoons to scoop out honey combs or to drink without
crouching.

Before becoming "stars" of many documentaries produced by
international television networks, they had for years been the
subject of observation and study by primatologists worldwide.

It is the very existence of the Suaq research center, set up
in 1992 by Professor Carel van Schaik, of Duke University in the
United States, a leading authority on large primates, which is
now threatened.

"If nothing is done fast the site could be closed, about one
quarter of the research area had already been illegally logged,"
says Doctor Kathryn Monk, research coordinator at the Leuser
management unit which oversees Suaq.

But Monk stresses that it is not just Suaq whose existence is
threatened, but the whole Leuser ecosystem, one of the biggest
protected areas in the world which is now under siege, mainly by
illegal loggers.

"We have been notifying the local government, we had meetings
with the vice-governor and all the relevant authorities and drew
their attention to the general increase in illegal logging, and
some particular very severe cases like Suaq.

"Yet nothing has been done and there is always the same lack
of compliance and enforcement of the law," Monk says.

The relentless exploitation has not even benefited the local
population whose traditional lifestyle has also been devastated,
according to researchers who have studied the issue.

An illegal sawmill is set up, often with the complicity of the
local authorities, most often the police and the army. It buys
the felled trees for a minimum price, often from local
inhabitants but more often from the tree fellers who follow them.
Then, when there is nothing left to cut, they strike camp,
leaving devastation in their wake.

Centered around a nature park of some 890,000 hectares, the
Leuser ecosystem covers some 2.5 million hectares, from the
beaches of the Indian Ocean to the hills along the Straits of
Malacca and contains two mountain chains some 3,000 meters high.

The flora and fauna are some of the most diverse in the world
and one of the few places where one can find, living together,
elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, clouded leopards, orangutans and a
multitude of other primates.

The inability of central and local authorities, who are in
some cases themselves implicated in the pillage of natural
resources, to enforce the law now threatens the survival of the
park, not to mention the unique flora and fauna, and the quality
of life of the two million people who live there.