Last refuge of the orang-utan

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Last refuge of the orang-utan

The Independent

 

Once it was a mighty orange army, 300,000-strong. Now

the tree-dwelling mammal is down to its last 25,000 as

its habitat is destroyed in favour of palm oil

plantations. David McNeill reports from the sanctuary

in Borneo battling to keep them alive

Published: 04 September 2007

 

Homeless, semi-paralysed and blind in one eye, Montana

faces an uncertain future. Even if his friends find

somewhere for him to live, the 15-year-old has been

seriously weakened by years in assisted care.

 

The lethal dangers of readjustment in his natural home

include men like those who shot him out of a tree when

he was just a baby and the hostile attentions of his

stronger neighbours. But for the source of the

greatest threat to Montana's existence, say his

supporters, look no further than your food cupboard.

 

The orang-utan, one of our closest animal relatives

and the largest tree-living mammal on the planet, is

in deep crisis. A once-mighty orange army of 300,000

that swung through the dense forests of much of

south-east Asia has dwindled to fewer than 25,000

concentrated on the two Indonesian islands of Borneo

and Sumatra, conservationists say. There, they cling

precariously to life on government-protected nature

reserves that are under siege by developers of one of

the world's most lucrative commodities: palm oil.

 

Illegal logging, fires and clearances have decimated

the tropical rainforest that is the exclusive home of

the primates, who nest high above the forest floor.

The casualties join Montana at a care centre near

Pangkalan Bun in central Borneo, crowded with more

than 320 homeless, orphaned and sick or injured

orang-utans ?a number that grows by a barely

manageable 20 per cent a year, say the workers there.

 

Montana peers unhappily from his cage. Unlike 250 of

his predecessors, who have been relocated to the

jungle upriver from here since this centre was set up

in 1998, he is unlikely to ever leave. " We just can't

find homes for all of them, " says Birute Galdikas, the

famed anthropologist who runs the care facility, after

producing a long list of daily needs that includes

nappies for the three dozen or so babies. " We are

looking at the extinction of orang-utans in the wild. "

She estimates that without action, the orang-utans, one

of the four great apes along with gorillas,

chimpanzees and bonobos, have just 10 to 15 years left

in the wild.

 

The Borneo orang-utan is listed as " highly endangered "

by the International Union for the Conservation of

Nature and Natural Resources, one short step on the

ladder of extinction above its Sumatran cousin, which

is critically endangered. " When it goes extinct, it

will be a terrible loss, " says Dr Galdikas. " I can't

tell you how urgent it is. "

 

To grasp just how urgent, you have to travel from

Pangkalan Bun up the chocolate-coloured Sekonyer river

to the heart of one of the world's last great

wildernesses, the Tanjung Putting Park, a

410,000-hectare nature reserve that is home to perhaps

6,000 orang-utans (nobody knows for sure) along with

proboscis monkeys, gibbons, macaques and crocodiles.

 

The reserve is an oasis in a landscape pressured by

human demands and the growing local population. Behind

the thick canopy of mangroves and Pandanus along the

Sekonyer, bald patches of cleared jungle can be seen

from the boat. Guards posted along the river patrol

for illegal logging and poaching.

 

Some orang-utans are kept as pets or smuggled out of

the country and sold to perform in Thai kick-boxing

matches or in circuses. But the " real issue " , say

scientists, is palm oil plantations.

 

Julia Roberts and Joanna Lumley made this journey a

few years ago, with documentary crews to film one of

the only places in the world where orang-utans can

still be seen in the wild. Lumley is said to have been

" horrified " to discover that her handbag was stuffed

with cosmetics containing palm oil.

 

Extracted from the fast-growing oil palm tree, it is

now probably the world's most popular vegetable oil,

surpassing its soybean alternative and used in a tenth

of supermarket products, including crisps, biscuits,

toothpaste, margarines and make-up.

 

So ubiquitous is the oil that few UK supermarkets have

ever seriously considered removing it from their

shelves ?and 85 per cent of it comes from Malaysia

and Indonesia, the world's number one and number two

producers. Often it comes from giant mono-crop

plantations hewn from the tropical forests and run by

agri-business concerns with powerful political

support.

 

" Greed drives the industry, " says Dr Galdikas. " The

industry is tied with the political elite who are

making bundles of money off this. You have to see

these mansions in Jakarta to understand the money that

is coming from it. " She calls the clearance of central

Borneo to make way for the crops a " scorched earth "

policy. " It is unbelievable, " she says.

 

Conservationists say many of the devastating fires in

1997-98 that robbed the orang-utans of perhaps 30 per

cent of their habitat in Borneo and helped blanket

much of south-east Asia in a dense smog were caused by

forest-clearing for palm oil plantations. Those fires

briefly drew attention to the plight of the Borneo and

Sumatra orang-utan, but Indonesia is still converting

land at a rate of at least 1,000 sq miles a year and

has announced plans to raze an area half the size of

the Netherlands to make the world's biggest palm oil

plantation, according to the UK-based Orang-utan

Foundation.

 

A couple of years ago, say local forest guides here,

2km was shaved off the northern end of the Tanjung

Putting reserve. " Nothing is safe, " says one, who

explains that the valuable forest hardwood, including

teak and mahogany is often sold to finance the

plantations.

 

The reserve is dotted with elevated feeding stations,

where the guides leave ripened bananas and milk to

supplement the animals' diets. As a small group of

tourists wait in the sweltering tropical heat, the

animals descend from the forest roof in ones and twos,

first mothers hugging their children, accompanied by

the sound of creaking and breaking branches.

 

With their bulk and powerful grip, the orang-utans do

considerable damage to the trees, but they also help

spread the seeds for new growth in the dung they leave

across the forest, a process of regeneration that has

gone on for millennia.

 

Then the dominant male arrives, a huge 250lb bruiser

named Tom by the guides, who has earned his title by

beating off all the other young pretenders.

 

As Tom peels and eats bananas, the guide tells us he

is 24 and, like all male orang-utans, lives alone.

" But we don't know where, somewhere high in the

trees, " he says. As the forest shrinks around him, so

do his sources of food, but the guides say they must

not destroy the orang-utans' ability to forage, and

turn them into vermin dependent on human charity. " The

only way for them to survive is for us to preserve

their habitat. "

 

The destruction of the rainforest here would also

deprive many other animals of their home, including

some possibly not yet discovered. One estimate is that

Indonesia is home to perhaps as many as 140 species

threatened with extinction in the next few decades,

including the Sumatran tiger and the Asian rhinoceros.

And in a bitterly ironic twist, they may go the way of

the dodo to meet demand for cleaner energy sources in

a world choking on fossil fuels: many countries are

looking to palm oil as a source of bio-fuel.

 

Cheap and carbon neutral, palm-oil diesel was until

recently hailed as a safe, renewable alternative to

petroleum, but such claims have been undermined by a

series of studies. One, by Wageningen University in

Holland, published this year, found the carbon

released from peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia,

drained and burned to allow plantations of palm oil

trees, released 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a

year into the atmosphere, or 8 per cent of the world's

fossil fuel emissions.

 

" It is like kicking your head to get rid of a

headache, " says Dr Galdikas. " The palm oil prices are

going through the roof because of their use as

bio-fuel and this, one of the poorest countries in the

world, is cutting down its trees to supply the

market. "

 

Scientists say that the global warming caused by the

release of this carbon is drying the forest floor,

making it easier to burn and adding to the

devastation.

 

To that double whammy, releasing vast quantities of

carbon into the air while destroying the forests that

suck it up, add another: the permanent, irreversible

loss of countless animals. But demand for palm oil

continues to rise. A $48m (?4m) palm-oil bio-diesel

plant opened in Australia's Northern Territories last

year and three 50 megawatt power stations are

currently planned in Holland.

 

The staff at the Pangkalan Bun centre say each of

those decisions brings the orang-utan one step closer

to extinction. Senior administrator Mrs Waliyati fears

more for her youngest charge, nine-month-old orphan

Britney, than her oldest. " It might be too late for

Montana, but what about the young ones? " she asks. The

solution, she says, is as simple as it is enormously

difficult. " Don't use palm oil. If you do, it means

you are agreeing to cutting down the rain forest. If

you don't stop, in 15 years, or sooner, there will be

no place for these animals. "

 

One of our closest ancestors

 

One of our closest ancestors, with 97 per cent of its

DNA the same as that of humans, the gentle orang-utan

was once found across Indonesia and as far north as

China, but is now on the edge of extinction.

Earthwatch estimates they may have as little as 12

years left in the wild, after which our only chance to

see them will be in zoos, where about 1,000 are kept

in captivity around the world. Their name comes from

the Borneo words orang hutan, meaning " people of the

forest " .

 

Almost totally dependent on trees, the animals survive

on a mostly fruit-based diet supplemented by bark,

flowers, leaves and insects. They usually live and

forage alone, except when mothers are nurturing their

children and teaching them how to survive in the dense

forests, a process that takes up to six years.

Scientists believe the animals are equipped with large

memories to help them locate the thousands of food

sources on which they depend.

 

Extremely slow to breed, the inter-birth cycle in

orang-utans takes up to eight years, limiting females

to three or four offspring during their 45-year life

span. Although successfully bred in captivity in

Australia and other parts of the world, the long-term

impact of captivity on the species is not known, but

is likely to be negative. Scientists say it is better

to save them now.

 

" Concern for orang-utans indicates concern for the

planet, " says the conservationist Birute Galdikas.

 

http://environment.independent.co.uk/wildlife/article2924404.ece

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Orangutan Foundation International

 

http://www.orangutan.org/