West Kalimantan orangutans in great danger

West Kalimantan orangutans in great danger

KETAPANG, West Kalimantan (JP): When you are in the area of
Gunung Palung National Park, you must be impressed by the
presence of its orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), billed as the
world's largest and healthiest.

Orangutans -- found only in Sumatra and Kalimantan -- numbered
between 20,000 and 25,000 according to 1993 data. In Borneo, in
both Indonesian and Malaysian, the population of orangutans is
recorded at 10,282 to 15,546. In Gunung Palung National Park
there are about 2,000 of them.

In the past two decades the world's orangutan population has
declined by some 80 percent. In the past decade alone in
Kalimantan, between 30 percent - 50 percent of the orangutans
have been killed, leaving only 5,141 to 7,773 remaining.

Depending on the natural condition, the population of
orangutans is generally one to three per square kilometer. As
more forest areas have been cleared, the population density has
become higher because they usually group together to forage for
food. Just like human beings, orangutans can suffer diseases such
as malaria and colic.

An orangutan can weigh up to 100 kg. It is generally 10 times
stronger than an average human being. A female orangutan begins
to have their babies at age 11 to 15 years while males are
sexually mature for reproduction at age 10 to 20 years.

A female orangutan is pregnant for 9 months and breast-feeds
its young for five to six years. She also looks after her young
for two to three more years. She will mate again eight years
after giving birth and then the reproduction cycle begins all
over again.

An orangutan can live up to 45 years. Therefore, a female
orangutan can give birth to a maximum of four babies. According
to research, the mortality rate of baby orangutans stands at 10
percent. If you wish to get a baby orangutan, you must first kill
the mother. You can imagine then the speed at which the
population of orangutans will be reduced if about 10 mother
orangutans are killed every year.

Orangutans live on low-lying land of a river basin and in the
foothills (like Gunung Palung National Park). The distribution of
orangutans in the habitant is very much dependent on the
availability of food.

Orangutans feed on a variety of forest fruits. When fruits are
not available, they will be content with leaves, edible topmost
and innermost palm fronds, the bark of certain trees and insects.
A six-year research conducted by Harvard University at Gunung
Palung National Park comes up with some 300 kinds of food for
orangutans.

During the fruit season, orangutans will gain weight, a
condition enabling them to survive when fruits are scarce and
they have to feed on bark, leaves and flowers. In the peak of the
fruit season, social interaction and mating also increase in
frequency. When fruit supplies become scarce, they use up their
fat and lose weight.

Then, the orangutans must walk longer distances in search of
food. The orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park must go
through swampy forests, walk across lowlands and a mountain chain
just to find trees with fruit.

Hunting

Today the orangutans in Gunung Palung are greatly threatened
by the loss of their habitat and hunting. If allowed to go on
unchecked, rampant lumber theft, opening up of land for non-
irrigated farming and forest fires will lead led to the gradual
disappearance of the habitat of orangutans.

Once they lose their habitat, orangutans will become extinct
because of starvation.

According to Elizabeth Yaap, head of the Orangutan Research
Project of Harvard University in Gunung Palung National Park,
rehabilitation is not good for the conservation of orangutans
because when they are raised by people they will not return to
their original and natural habitat.

They will instead return to their rehabilitation center
because they have mingled with human beings. Besides, orangutans
raised in the rehabilitation center must not be released into the
wild where there are already other orangutans, said Elizabeth,
former orangutan researcher at Tanjung Puting, Central
Kalimantan.

"If this happens, there will be food scarcity and the
orangutans will die," she noted.

According to her, the best way to conserve orangutans is to
conserve nature, their original home. Orangutans will multiply if
its natural home is in good condition and its food is sufficient.

The people living around Gunung Palung have often posed these
questions: "What's the use of spending millions of U.S. dollars
on orangutans while the people in the surrounding areas are still
poor? Why don't you allocate the funds to improve the welfare of
the people living around the area?"

According to Elizabeth, orangutans are considered an umbrella
species, the main animal in the life cycle of creatures in the
tropical rain forest.

"If orangutans are extinct, there will be imbalance in the
ecosystem in a tropical rain forest," she said.

Orangutans are main seed-spreading animals. As they look for
food covering a distance in the radius of 30 km, they spread the
seeds of particular endemic plants in a tropical rain forest
area. So, protecting orangutans actually means protecting other
species.

Ary S Sugandhi, an orangutan researcher from Conservation
International Indonesia, says orangutans are yet to be managed in
accordance with their economic value.

In fact, he says, in a national park in Costa Rica, for
example, a few gorillas can bring in US$598,000 a year to the
country's tourism sector. In this respect, Ir Lestari, an officer
of Gunung Palung National Park, has admitted that the national
park is yet to be professionally managed.

To save orangutans, researchers have recommended that the law
must be more firmly enforced and heavier penalties exacted on
those involved in orangutan hunting and trading.

Research

The orangutan research station in Gunung Palung is located at
Gunung Panti. It was Cheryl Knott of Harvard University who
initiated this research in 1994. Other researchers after Knott
include Elizabeth Yaap and Andrea Johnson.

According to Yaap, the orangutan research in Gunung Palung is
concerned not only with the behavior, reproduction and
physiological aspect of orangutans but also with efforts to
conserve and rehabilitate them.

The Indonesian government has made use of the results of
orangutan researches undertaken under this project for its 1999
Orangutan Action Plan, a national strategy devised to protect
this animal against the threat of extinction.

In orangutan research, the researcher must keep tabs on the
animal from the time it awakes until the time it goes to sleep in
order to observe its behavior; what it eats and how much of the
food it eats; the distance it covers as well as its routes and
how it interacts with other orangutans. Besides all this, an
orangutan's urine and feces will also be collected to find out
its hormones and parasites.

The researchers form Harvard University regularly invite
students and local people to visit the research station.

"It is expected that in this way the local people will be
aware of the need to conserve this national park and the
orangutans in it," said Johnson.

The presence of orangutans in Gunung Palung is also beneficial
because it has reduced the frequency of timber and animal theft
in the forest as the thieves are afraid of being reported to the
authorities by those conducting research on the animal.

In Kalimantan orangutan researches are conducted at five
sites: Gunung Panti Research Station in Gunung Palung National
Park (Ketapang, West kalimantan), River Sekonyer in Tanjung
Puting National Park (Central Kalimantan), Orangutan
Reintroduction Station in Semboja Forest Research Center (East
Kalimantan), Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center (Sabah,
Malaysia), Bako Wildlife Sanctuary (Sarawak, Malaysia).

If you are interested to know more about orangutans in Gunung
Palung National Park you may contact the following: (1) National
Park Unit - Ketapang, Jl. KH Wahid Hasyim No. 41 A PO Box 141
Ketapang 78801 Tel/Fax No. (0534) 33539, (2) Elizabeth Yaap or
Andrea Johnson - Orangutan Project Harvard University, PO Box
162, Ketapang 78801, Fax 0534-32740 E-mail: yaap@usa.net, (3) Dr
Cheryl Knott, Vice Director of Orangutan Project, Department of
Anthropology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge,
MA 02138 Fax: 0011-617-496-8041 e-mail: knott@fas.harvard.edu.

-- Edi Petebang