Facts about Orangutan

Orangutans are one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of our DNA. But as human populations increase, orangutan numbers are in decline. Orangutans once ranged throughout Indochina and south to Java. But today fragmented populations of two subspecies are restricted to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

• • Probably no more than 50,000 Borneo orangutans and 6,650 Sumatra orangutans remain in the wild, half the number that existed 20 years ago. The way things are going, in another 50 years wild orangutans could be all but extinct.
  • Habitat loss is the number one threat to orangutans and additional threats, such as poaching for zoos and the pet trade, are directly related.
  • Slow reproduction, as well as an intimate dependence on their landscape, make orangutans highly vulnerable to disturbance and prone to extinction.
  • Most orangutans can probably escape fires, but die of starvation when they crowd into unfamiliar, less favorable
    forests. An estimated 2,000 orangutans died in Central Kalimantan peat forests as a result of the 1997 fires.
  • Primates come second to parrots as the most soughtafter animals for live trade. More than 500 Borneo orangutans are smuggled to Java and overseas each year and 40 percent of trapped animals die due
    to injury and stress.
  • Some 75% of orangutans live outside protected areas, help protect the habitat of the orangutan and many other globally important and endangered species.

Humans threaten Asia’s orangutans

Orangutans could become the first great ape to become extinct unless action is taken to protect the species from human encroachment in Southeast Asia, according to a US study.

The number of orangutans in Indonesia and Malaysia has declined sharply since 2004, mostly because of illegal logging and the expansion of palm oil plantations, the study, released on Saturday, said.

Serge Wich, a scientist at the Great Ape Trust in the US state of Iowa, and 15 colleagues found the orangutan population on Indonesia’s Sumatra island had dropped nearly 14 per cent since 2004 to 6,600.

No giant apes were found in parts of Aceh province.
The study - which appears in the July issue of science journal Oryx - discovered the population on Malaysia’s Borneo island fell by 10 per cent to 49,600 apes.

“It’s disappointing that there are still declines even though there have been quite a lot of conservation efforts over the past 30 years,” Wich said.

Researchers said that the orangutan losses on Borneo were occurring at an “alarming rate” and described the situation on Sumatra as in “rapid decline”.

“Unless extraordinary efforts are made soon, it could become the first great ape species to go extinct,” they said.
Endangered species

The study is the latest in a long line of research that has predicted the demise of orangutans, which are only found in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In May, the Center for Orangutan Protection said just 20,000 of the endangered primates remain in the tropical jungle of central Kalimantan on Borneo island, down from 31,300 in 2004.

Based on that estimate, the study concluded that orangutans there could be extinct by 2011.
Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in the UK, praised the new study as a comprehensive look at the orangutan population.

“What matters is that the rate of decline is increasing, and unless something is done, the wild orangutan is on a quick spiral towards extinction, whether in two years, five years or 10 years,” she said.

Desilets was not involved in the research.

Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s top palm oil producers, have pushed to expand plantations amid a rising demand for biofuels, which are considered cleaner and cheaper than petrol.

But Wich’s study notes there is room for “cautious optimism”.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, announced a major initiative to save the nation’s orangutans at a UN climate conference last year, and the Aceh governor has declared a moratorium on logging.

Many also hope that Indonesia will protect millions of acres of forest as part of any UN climate agreement that will go into effect in 2012.

Pressure mounting to save orangutan

Pressures are mounting to save endangered orangutans in Central Kalimantan, where most of the world’s only great ape lives under increasingly bleak conditions due to declining forests — their habitat.

Aldrianto Priadjati of the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation said the number of displaced orangutans due to forest conversion for timber estates and agriculture, including palm oil plantations, has increased. “Currently, there are about 1,000 orangutans being rehabilitated in our orangutan rehabilitation center. Most of them were saved from palm oil plantations,” he said. BOS’ Nyaru Menteng, the world’s largest orangutan rehabilitation center, is about 30 kilometers south of Palangka Raya, the capital city of

Central Kalimantan.
Many of the rehabilitated orangutans have been ready to be released to primary forests. “But it is very difficult for us to find the primary forests for the orangutan to live securely,” he said. He was one of the speakers at an August workshop on the implementation of the strategic and action plans for orangutan conservation. The workshop was jointly organized by the Forestry Ministry’s Natural Resources Conservation Center (BKSDA), BOS, World Wildlife Fund, oil palm company Agro Group, Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), Orangutan Conservation Services Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The event aimed to implement orangutan conservation action plans that were launched by the ministry of forestry in

Jakarta late last year. The workshop’s participants said the forest’s decline was due to rapid conversion of forests into industrial timber estates and agriculture (including palm oil plantations), nonsustainable logging, forest fires and illegal hunting and trading of the species. According to data from BKSDA, forests have been declining annually between 1 and 1.5 percent in Sumatra and between 1.5 and 2 percent in Kalimantan. The forests’ decline was partly due to the implementation of regional autonomy in 2001, which has given regencies authority to issue any regulation they consider necessary for their respective regencies to attract new investments. With such authority, many regencies have seen their forests decrease rapidly, bringing catastrophe to many species, including the orangutan. The rapid conversion of forests, combined with weak enforcement of environmental laws, has also increased the human-orangutan conflicts as many orangutans start seeking food outside of their habitat.

Sanjay Upasena, director of sustainability of Agro Indomas, the subsidiary of Agro Group, said it was not fair to blame the palm oil companies alone for the loss of the orangutan’s habitat. “Not all of them (palm oil companies) ar to blame for the displaced orangutans. In our case, we only use degraded forests for our palm plantations, which formerly belonged to the forest concessionaires (HPH),” he said. “Most of the orangutans we have were brought by the local people to us. The rest we found entering our palm oil plantations, and to save them we call people from the orangutan rehabilitation center.”

Separately, the Indonesian palm oil producers are back in the spotlight this week, with the association rejecting a moratorium call from Greenpeace on land clearing which is threatening to wipe out more than 8,000 orangutans in the next three years, news agency AFP reported last Thursday. Novi Hardianto of the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) told AFP the decision to reject the call by Greenpeace means there is no effective mechanism for protecting thousands of orangutans living outside conservation areas. In rejecting the moratorium, the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association argued the standards developed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) were enough to protect the species. However, Novi said land clearing by the companies showed the voluntary standards would do little to arrest the rapid decline of the number of orangutans living outside
Central Kalimantan’s conservation areas. “If it keeps up at this rate, we’ll see orangutans in this environment wiped out within three years,” he was quoted by AFP as saying.

COP estimates 20,032 orangutans live in the wild inCentral Kalimantan province and that close to 3,000 of them die every year. A spokeswoman for the RSPO said the environmental group was entitled to raise any accusations against the companies under its grievance procedures. “If it is true they (the companies) need to make corrections in the field,” Desi Kusmadewi said. “Before they are kicked out as RSPO members, usually the RSPO gives them a chance to correct themselves.” In the workshop, Birute Mary Galdikas, chairwoman of OFI, said the orangutans were facing a bleak future. “But I’m not saying they cannot be saved. This is possible if all the necessary steps to save the endangered species are taken seriously,” Gladikas said, who has been working in
Kalimantan for 37 years to conserve the orangutan. OFI manages the Tanjung Puting protected forests for orangutan in Tanjung Putting, Central Kalimantan. “Orangutans mean people of the forests. If the forests are gone, then the orangutans will also be gone as the forests are their habitat.”

Sawit Semakin Mengancam Orangutan

Perluasan areal tanaman kelapa sawit menjadi ancaman paling serius terhadap habitat orangutan saat ini, baik di wilayah Sumatera bagian utara maupun di Kalimantan.
Diperparah lagi dengan kondisi dari sekitar 61.234 ekor orangutan yang ada saat ini, sekitar 70 persen di antaranya tinggal di habitat dengan status bukan hutan konservasi atau bukan hutan lindung.

Demikian dikemukakan Deputy Program Director Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP) Jamartin Sihite dalam lokakarya Jurnalisme Lingkungan untuk Konservasi Orangutan dan Habitatnya, yang berlangsung 11-13 Juli 2008 di Universitas Indonesia, Depok.

”Ketika berada di habitat dengan status hutan konservasi, spesies orangutan relatif lebih terlindungi karena berdasarkan status itu negara tidak mengizinkan pengalihan fungsi hutan,” kata Jamartin.

Penyebaran orangutan saat ini diperkirakan sebanyak 6.667 ekor berada di hutan primer seluas 14.452 kilometer persegi di kawasan Gunung Leuser wilayah Provinsi Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam bagian selatan dan Sumatera Utara. Kemudian sekitar 54.567 ekor orangutan menempati habitat hutan primer sekitar seluas 50.000 kilometer persegi di Kalimantan.

”Data itu resmi yang digunakan pemerintah saat ini. Namun, data itu berdasarkan pengkajian status populasi dan habitat yang dilakukan pada 2004 sehingga dimungkinkan populasi dan habitatnya sekarang sudah jauh berkurang, apalagi perluasan areal sawit dengan pola perkebunan inti rakyat sulit dikendalikan,” kata Jamartin.

Diperkirakan dalam 10 tahun mendatang jumlah populasi akan turun sampai 50 persen dan memasuki 50 tahun ke depan dikhawatirkan orangutan sebagai satwa asli Indonesia itu punah.

Harry Alexander dari Wildlife Conservation Society Program memaparkan, kebijakan pelestarian hutan dan sumber daya alam lainnya masih sangat buruk. Hal itu, misalnya, hak menguasai hutan bukan pada negara melainkan pemerintah pusat, pengelolaannya bersifat sentralistik, skala besar, monopoli dan oligopoli, tidak transparan, tidak melibatkan publik, tidak akuntabel, hilangnya pengakuan hak adat, tidak ada supremasi hukum, dan tidak ada mekanisme resolusi konflik.

Jito Sugarjito dari Asosiasi Pemerhati dan Ahli Primata Indonesia (Apapi) menuturkan, perlindungan orangutan dengan habitatnya akan menyelamatkan pula berbagai spesies lainnya. Untuk itulah, orangutan disebut sebagai spesies payung.

”Orangutan merupakan pemakan spesialis yang sangat rentan seandainya jumlah pohon di habitatnya terus berkurang. Ditambah lagi masa reproduksi yang lambat, bisa mencapai rata-rata 7 tahun, turut memengaruhi percepatan makin punahnya orangutan