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.