Kalimantan orangutan on brink of extinction

Rusman The Jakarta Post/Samarinda

Suparlan was shocked when he saw the state of his banana plantation. Trees were lying on the ground and bananas were strewn about everywhere.

The farmer assumed the perpetrators were pigs, so he was stunned to find an orangutan trapped in a net he set up near the plantation. He could not bring himself to kill the orangutan, so he released him.

To Suparlan's relief, the orangutan headed for the Kutai National Park, some five kilometers from his banana plantation in East Kalimantan.

"This was not the first such incident. Last year, several orangutans were found looking for food in residential areas and captured," said Suparlan.

More orangutans are being forced to look for food outside of the forest because their habitat has shrunk dramatically in recent years due to illegal logging and the clearance of land for plantations and farms.

According to data from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Kutai National Park consisted of two million hectares in 1934, but had shrunk to 306,000 hectares by 1957. In 1997, the park was down to 198,604 hectares and Walhi estimates it has since lost another 25,600 hectares due to illegal logging.

"And today the forest is continuing to shrink due to illegal logging and land clearance," said Syarifudin, the director of Walhi's East Kalimantan office. There are currently thought to be 606 orangutan living in the national park.

The number of orangutan in the park is falling as more of the animals die from a lack of food, as well as from poaching.

Residents report that local middlemen sell baby orangutans to animal traders for about Rp 200,000. The orangutans eventually make their way to animal markets, where they are sold for anywhere between Rp 2 million and Rp 10 million.

A spokesman for the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation, Aditya Yudhistira, said there were a number of factors behind the declining orangutan numbers in East Kalimantan.

He said these factors included forest fires, the illegal trade in orangutans and habitat destruction.

The foundation is currently raising some 200 orangutans, which will be given to the East Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Body before being released back into the wild.

"The 200 orangutans were confiscated from people who captured the animals for their own gain," said Aditya.