Orangutan Outreach Website - Saving the Orangutan

KUNMING, Yunnan, China, May 27, 2008 (ENS) - An ape subspecies that once roamed China’s Yunnan province has disappeared, a Chinese-Swiss research team has concluded. A white-handed gibbon, or lar gibbon, Hylobates lar, was last observed in 1988 in the Nangunhe Nature Reserve in southwestern Yunnan province, and the loud, melodious calls of this species of ape were last heard in Yunnan in 1992.

After two weeks of recent field work, the 14 member team of scientists assembled by anthropologists from Zurich University concluded that as a result of continued forest destruction, fragmentation and deterioration as well as hunting, this gibbon species no longer exists in Yunnan.

The scientific team surveyed all Chinese forests that ever had reported supporting white-handed gibbons at any time during the last 20 years, but no trace of the animals was found.
White-handed gibbon mother and infant (Photo courtesy University of Zurich)

The team includes scientists who are members of the Gibbon Conservation Alliance based at Zurich University, and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, as well as staff members of the Nangunhe National Nature Reserve

“This loss is particularly tragic,” says anthropologist Thomas Geissmann, “because the extinct Chinese population was described as a distinct subspecies, the so-called Yunnan white-handed gibbon.”

This subspecies, Hylobates lar yunnanensis, is not known from any other place.

The white-handed gibbon, like the gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan, is an ape, not a monkey. Unlike monkey species, gibbons have no tail, assume an upright posture and have a more highly developed brain.

Geissmann now hopes that the Yunnan white-handed gibbon subspecies may have survived in neighboring Myanmar, but so far, he has no evidence of this.

“The extinction of the Chinese white-handed gibbon is an urgent alarm signal, because several other ape species in China are also endangered by extinction,” says Geissmann.

For instance, the white-cheeked crested gibbon, Nomascus leucogenys, has not been sighted in China since the 1980s.

There are fewer than 50 individuals of the Cao-Vit crested gibbon, Nomascus nasutus, remaining. They are found in China’s Guangxi province and Cao Bang province in Vietnam.

The most endangered remaining gibbon is the Hainan crested gibbon, Nomascus hainanus, on the south Chinese island of Hainan. Fewer than 20 individuals are left in the wild.

The Chinese-Swiss team of scientists warns that the loss of the Yunnan white-handed gibbons may be the beginning of an unprecedented wave of extinctions which threatens to terminate the existence of most Chinese ape species.

Geissmann says, “We hope that our research results will alarm the Chinese government as well as international conservation agencies and encourage them to initiate immediate efforts to save China’s last surviving apes.”

Photo: University of Zurich
Source: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-27-01.asp

By GLENN HUROWITZ
Special to the Los Angeles Times

While showering a few weeks ago, I realized I had run out of conditioner. So I reached up and grabbed my wife’s bottle — Clairol Herbal Essences Rainforest Flowers, “with essences of nourishing palm.”

The label caught me slightly by surprise. As an environmental journalist, I’ve been writing about the ecologically destructive effect of palm oil for some time now.

Whether it’s used as an additive in soap, cosmetics or food, or processed into a biofuel, palm oil is one of the worst culprits in the climate crisis. Most of it comes from the disappearing, ultra-carbon-rich rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, of which 25,000 square miles have been cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations.

That burning releases enough carbon dioxide into the air to rank Indonesia as the No. 3 such polluter in the world. It also destroys the last remaining habitat for orangutans, Sumatran rhinos, tigers and other endangered wildlife. So what was this deadly oil doing in our otherwise ecologically friendly apartment?

I started to inspect other items on our shelves. Despite our efforts to keep our family green, we had admitted into our home several products containing palm oil: Burt’s Bees soap, chocolate truffles from Trader Joe’s, Kashi breakfast bars, Whole Foods water crackers and many others.

Lots of other products, some of them marketed as “green,” contain this rhino-killer too: Oreos, Chewy Chips Ahoy!, Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn, Hershey’s Kisses “Hugs,” Twix and many other processed foods.

Even some Girl Scout cookies have it, which is why this spring, 12-year-old Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen of Ann Arbor, Mich., refused to sell the cookies and have encouraged the organization to drop the ingredient.

The great tragedy of all this palm oil use (about 30 million tons globally every year) is that it’s so easily replaced by healthier vegetable oils, like canola, that come from significantly less ecologically sensitive areas. Indeed, every single product I examined had either a variant or a competitor that didn’t contain palm oil — with no discernible effect on price or quality.

Sitting next to those Whole Foods-brand water crackers were Haute Cuisine water crackers made with canola oil. Down the aisle from palm-oil laden Ivory soap was palm-oil-free Lever 2000.

Unfortunately, most of the food and cosmetics conglomerates are more interested in covering up the environmental destruction than replacing the problem ingredient. Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Unilever, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and others (including the Girl Scouts) assure the public that such environmental concerns don’t apply to them because they (or their suppliers) are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry group (with a handful of environmental members) that sets guidelines on growing and selling palm oil.

Unfortunately, as a recent Greenpeace report revealed, the group’s standards are almost meaningless because they don’t include inspections of the palm oil tree plantations. The Roundtable plans to address this problem in the next few months by certifying a small amount of oil that it says has been verifiably produced according to some sustainable standards. But even Roundtable Vice President Darrel Webber acknowledges that the process “isn’t perfect,” in part because liquid oils are easy to mix and nearly impossible to track.

So how can we keep dead orangutans out of our hair, food and gas tanks? Consumers should scan ingredient labels for palm oil and palm kernel oil (and derivatives such as palmitic acid) and choose brands that don’t contain them. Wall Street should divest from this ecologically subprime market, not only because it’s the right thing to do but because its high carbon footprint means that palm oil producers and buyers are likely to be penalized in any scheme to reduce global warming.

But governments must act, too. The European Union, for instance, is considering a ban on palm oil and other tropical biofuels. But as my hair conditioner shows, targeting biofuels alone isn’t enough: Any ban must extend to food and cosmetics as well.

That might slightly inconvenience the food and cosmetics companies, but at least we’ll know that no orangutans died to make our Thin Mints.
Glenn Hurowitz writes about the environment for Grist magazine and is the author of Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party.

Source: http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/664549.html

With one word, these guys could declare a moratorium on deforestation and not only make it a crime to kill an orangutans– but insure that the laws were actually enforced. But no… apparently $9.2 billion isn’t enough.
How many dead orangutans will it take before the people wake up and protect their national heritage from the business elite? I wonder how it feels to be responsible for the extinction of a species? ~ Rich

Jakarta- 27th May - Aburizal Bakrie, the coordinating minister for people’s welfare, tops the 2008 list of richest Indonesians with a total net worth of US$9.2 billion, an eightfold increase from last year on the back of rising global commodity and energy prices, a report says.

PT Bumi Resources, the country’s largest mining company, owned by the Bakrie family, has seen its share price increase 400 percent over the past year as global demand for coal has surged, according to a report by GlobeAsia magazine released Monday.

Shares of PT Bakrie Sumatra Plantations and PT Energi Mega Persada, entirely or partly owned by the Bakrie family, have also risen over the past year.

Aburizal, who was named Indonesia’s richest person in 2007 by Forbes magazine, looks set to expand his fortune with plans to acquire controlling stakes in three affiliated companies, putting his mining, energy and property interests into one holding company.

Aburizal has faced criticism over the role mining company PT Lapindo Brantas, whose shares are partly owned by the Bakrie family, played in triggering a mud volcano in Sidoarjo in East Java that has left thousands homeless.

Following Aburizal on GlobeAsia’s rich list is tobacco billionaire Budi Hartono, the owner of PT Djarum Company, with a total net worth of $6.8 billion.

Budi has expanded beyond tobacco, taking over a majority of shares in Bank Central Asia, which booked a net profit of Rp 1.2 trillion ($129 million) in the first quarter this year, a 8.4 percent increase from the same period in 2007.

The top newcomer to the list is Martias, owner of First Resources, who had reaped windfall profits from his palm oil business.

Martias has a total net worth of $410 million.

Sandiaga Uno, chairman of the Indonesian Young Entrepreneurs Association, is one of the country’s fastest rising young entrepreneurs, the magazine said.

Sandiaga, who has a total net worth of $245 million, in 1998 co-founded private equity firm Saratoga Capital, the major shareholder of coal miner PT Adaro Indonesia and the controller of two plantation companies with a total of 20,000 hectares of land.

Source: The Jakarta Post

Irene Hadiprayitno, Utrecht

The palm oil industry is not only popular in the discourse of biofuels, but it is also economically lucrative.

In Indonesia alone the industry covers 17 provinces, employing about 2 million workers. The industry has generated an income amounting to Rp 7.779 million.

However, while examining the situation at the grassroots level, the effect is to the contrary, rather than improving it is victimizing.

Millions of hectares of tropical forests have been burned to make way for oil palm plantations; an annual haze is being experienced by people living in the vicinity. According to Sawit Watch, Indonesia has increased its palm estates to 7.3 million hectares and is planning to expand the area by a further 20 million hectares — an area the size of England, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.

Moreover, the industry is also notoriously known as the cause of local conflicts. In January 2008, Sawit Watch monitored 513 conflicts between communities and companies. Some of these conflicts can be traced back to earlier land disputes. Mostly, they are over land rights, but other disputes arise over compensation, unmet promises and smallholding arrangements.

The industry has also caused displacement, homelessness and morbidity. In Aceh, 360,000 people were displaced from their homes and 70 died as a result of floods in 2006, which have been a common problem in the region since oil palm plantations arrived.

At the grassroots level, regardless of how important the palm oil is for biodiesel production, the rising price does not affect peasants’ income. Their salaries remain determined by the regional minimum wage scheme. In the case of North Barito, Central Kalimantan, one of the prominent palm oil plantations, it is only Rp. 876,536, an unreasonable amount compared to the selling price of crude palm oil, which was US$1135 per metric ton on Jan. 15, 2008.

Ideally, development should imply a structural improvement to people’s ability to sustain their daily livelihoods. Indeed, not only are economies to be uplifted, but the people themselves. Thus, both living standards and capabilities of those living at the grassroots should increase.

When designing a policy, a primary concern should be how to protect those affected by the consequences and, in particular, how to secure their entitlements within the execution of development policies. It is here we touch upon internationally accepted human rights standards and procedures. Human rights pertaining to each and every human being constitutes a necessity for protecting people against hazards.

When combating hazards caused by the palm oil industry, one can refer to the United Nations’ Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the General Assembly in 1986. The declaration defines the right to development as an inalienable human right by virtue. Accordingly, every human and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development so that all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.

Obviously, development is seen here as a process that encompasses economic, social, cultural and political aspects. This implies a structural uplifting of welfare and well-being, affecting not just infrastructure, but also human beings.

The declaration regards those affected by development policies as right-holders who have to be protected against losing their entitlements, a common situation in development hazards. Accordingly, the right to development requires adopting favorable measures for development beneficiaries in the development process and for development victims to seek claims for compensation from development hazards.

The Indonesian government is responsible for implementing the right to development. However, rather than eradicating the hazard, they continues to comply with other interests rather than people. There are no appropriate measures allocated to deal with homelessness, degradation of health, morbidity or social conflict.

Instead the government recently adopted a forestry law, which provides a broad license for companies to exploit protected forests as long as they are willing to pay annual rental fees ranging between Rp 1.2 million (US$125) and Rp 3 million per hectare. Notably, the law prioritizes companies over people, who are now more vulnerable to development hazards.

In the case of the palm oil industry, the Indonesian government not only denies access to compensation, but also fails to protect and respect peoples’ entitlements by not taking actions to eradicate the hazards and adopting disincentive regulations.

Using human rights to combat hazards caused by the palm oil industry entails protecting people during the process and ensuring fairness in development distribution. From the peoples’ perspective, this grants opportunities for legitimate claims addressing correlated obligations or duties. Thus, it stresses the opportunity to seek remedies and compensation in the case of development hazards.

The writer is a PhD Candidate at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University, writing on the topic of the right to development.

Source: http://old.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20080527.F05&irec=4

Palm oil is everywhere: It’s in soap, food and makeup. Some say it’s good for you, while others say it’s wrecking the environment. Rolf Skar, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace, makes the case that not only is the oil bad for the areas where it’s produced, it’s also one of the leading causes of global warming.

“The fastest and the worst deforestation rate in the history of humankind is taking place in the tropical forests of Indonesia,” Skar says. “That record-breaking rain forest destruction is being fueled by the clearing of land to make palm oil.”

Skar also says as much as 80 percent of the land-clearing in Indonesia, one of the principal sources for palm oil, is also illegal. As a result, he says, shady production facilities are rife with human-rights abuses. Likewise, the diminished habitat hurts orangutans and Sumatran white tigers, both of which are facing extinction.

But it’s the broader toll, Skar says, that makes palm oil such an important issue. “People don’t realize that when you look at the global greenhouse gas emitters, there’s China and the U.S. at the top … but the third is Indonesia,” Skar says. He says the clearing and burning of forests for more and more palm oil facilities releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases. “If you care about global warming … then you’ve got to care about what’s happening in Indonesia right now.”

People who buy products have plenty of alternatives to palm oil, Skar says. “There’s a lot of products out there that don’t contain palm oil. They taste just as good; it works just as well.”

Listen to the audio report

By Marianne Kearney, foreign correspondent

JAKARTA // The illegal logging destroying Indonesia’s tropical forests is fuelling another illicit trade: the trafficking of girls as sex slaves.

Girls as young as 13 are being lured from their homes with promises of employment as waitresses or maids, and then pressed into servicing loggers, their bosses and forestry officials deep within the jungles of West Kalimantan, on Indonesia’s side of Borneo island.

Maria, a child’s rights activist, stumbled upon the jungle brothel during a trip to West Kalimantan to rescue teenagers in illegal gold mines.

The girls, many of them between 13 and 17, had been trafficked from within West Kalimantan, or Indonesia’s main island of Java, 920km away, she said.

“If they want to run, they’re in the middle of the forest, living beside a river, which is too deep and dangerous to swim,” said Maria, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of being tracked down by the traffickers.

The girls were paid as little as 300,000 rupiah per month (Dh118), and forced to live in appalling conditions, she said.

“They didn’t even have simple houses; they were living in huts or just tents made of plastic, with thatch roofs. There were no facilities for them,” Maria said.

With high unemployment levels and low education, many village girls in Indonesia jump at any offers to work overseas or in other cities, particularly because salaries in foreign countries are higher. Last year about 4.3 million people, mostly women, left Indonesia for Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Middle East to work as maids or sometimes as nurses, collectively bringing home US$13 billion.

But a percentage are underage girls who are offered jobs as restaurant or shop workers or maids, are either forced to become prostitutes or exploited by their employers, either underpaid, or overworked. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which runs counter trafficking programmes across Indonesia, says it has assisted 3,000 trafficking victims since 2005. “This really was trafficking; they were tricked into this,” Maria said. The brothel-bar was within a camp where there were hundreds of teenage boys either working in the illegal gold mines or illegal logging in the resource-rich island.

After returning from the camp, Maria said, she alerted local and national police, but that little had been done.

Maria said it was too dangerous for her to return to the camp. She has received several threats against her life and has been given police protection back in the capital, Jakarta.

Ilyas Roostien, the Jakarta-based head of Peduli Anak, a non-governmental organisation for street children, accused police and government officials in the province of being entangled in the illegal businesses. “The police and military and government officials were customers there too,” Ms Roostien said.

After a local television station reported on the jungle brothel, some girls were moved to another location, while some families were able to rescue their daughters, a local journalist and Maria said.

“Some of the girls have been freed, but some are still detained,” said Abdurrahman, the head of Ketapang village where the camp is located, and who like many Indonesians uses only one name. Mr Abdurrahman said he suspected local police were taking a cut of the camp’s earnings in exchange for turning a blind eye to the mining and logging activities, as well as the brothel.

One girl who tried to escape through the forest last year was raped by a police officer, he said.

Frustrated with the response from local police, Ms Roostien reported the case to Indonesia’s national police. However, police focused on the environmental destruction, launching a massive illegal logging investigation in which several high-level police officers and forestry officials were arrested, and timber worth US$24 million (Dh88m) destined for Malaysia, China and Taiwan discovered. “Illegal logging is more important to the police, than the rights of these children,” she said.

Police from the anti-trafficking unit in Jakarta said had opened an investigation into the case, but they had to wait for a report from the local police first. So far, no report has been produced. The government’s social welfare department in Jakarta said it wanted to help the girls but was refused permission by provincial officials.

Illegal logging is rampant in Indonesia, with environmentalists warning that the last of the some of the world’s most bio-diverse tropical forests could be destroyed within a decade. Wahli, an Indonesian environmental group, estimates that every minute, primary forest equivalent to seven football pitches is destroyed in Indonesia. The trend of trafficking girls to service loggers, the police and politicians paid to ignore the logging, is not a new phenomenon, but it appears to be growing.

A government official in Pontianak, the provincial capital in West Kalimantan, tasked with assisting trafficking victims, said there had been several cases of illegal logging, and even legal logging, fuelling trafficking. “There’s logging mafia, and they keep moving around logging different forests, and each time they move the places for sex workers too,” said Nur Aini, head of the government child protection unit in the province’s social welfare department. Telepak, an environment group, which investigates the illegal logging business, said girls often were trafficked into illegal logging camps.

“In one place we found a group of women who had been offered work as maids but they were tricked,” said Hari Gunawan. “Because the logging location is so isolated, they depend on the loggers to escape, so they can’t get away.”

Source: http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080524/FOREIGN/817965842/1015/SPORT&Profile=1015

By MICHAEL TOMASELLO

Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals. It is thus with decidedly mixed feelings that we regard the frequent reports that activities once thought to be uniquely human are also performed by other species: chimpanzees who make and use tools, parrots who use language, ants who teach. Is there anything left?

You might think that human beings at least enjoy the advantage of being more generally intelligent. To test this idea, my colleagues and I recently administered an array of cognitive tests — the equivalent of nonverbal I.Q. tests — to adult chimpanzees and orangutans (two of our closest primate relatives) and to 2-year-old human children. As it turned out, the children were not more skillful overall. They performed about the same as the apes on the tests that measured how well they understood the physical world of space, quantities and causality. The children performed better only on tests that measured social skills: social learning, communicating and reading the intentions of others.

But such social gifts make all the difference. Imagine a child born alone on a desert island and somehow magically kept alive. What would this child’s cognitive skills look like as an adult — with no one to teach her, no one to imitate, no pre-existing tools, no spoken or written language? She would certainly possess basic skills for dealing with the physical world, but they would not be particularly impressive. She would not invent for herself English, or Arabic numerals, or metal knives, or money. These are the products of collective cognition; they were created by human beings, in effect, putting their heads together.

When you look at apes and children in situations requiring them to put their heads together, a subtle but significant difference emerges. We have observed that children, but not chimpanzees, expect and even demand that others who have committed themselves to a joint activity stay involved and not shirk their duties. When children want to opt out of an activity, they recognize the existence of an obligation to help the group — they know that they must, in their own way, “take leave” to make amends. Humans structure their collaborative actions with joint goals and shared commitments.

Another subtle but crucial difference can be seen in communication. The great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — communicate almost exclusively for the purpose of getting others to do what they want. Human infants, in addition, gesture and talk in order to share information with others — they want to be helpful. They also share their emotions and attitudes freely — as when an infant points to a passing bird for its mother and squeals with glee. This unprompted sharing of information and attitudes can be seen as a forerunner of adult gossip, which ensures that members of a group can pool their knowledge and know who is or is not behaving cooperatively. The free sharing of information also creates the possibility of pedagogy — in which adults impart information by telling and showing, and children trust and use this information with confidence. Our nearest primate relatives do not teach and learn in this manner.

Finally, human infants, but not chimpanzees, put their heads together in pretense. This seemingly useless play activity is in fact a first baby step toward the creation of distinctively human social institutions. In social institutions, participants typically endow someone or something with special powers and obligations; they create roles like president or teacher or wife. Presidents and teachers and wives operate with special powers and obligations because, and only because, we all believe and act as if they fill these roles and have these powers. Two young children pretending together that a stick is a horse have thus taken their first step on the road not just to Oz but also toward inhabiting human institutional reality.

Human beings have evolved to coordinate complex activities, to gossip and to playact together. It is because they are adapted for such cultural activities — and not because of their cleverness as individuals — that human beings are able to do so many exceptionally complex and impressive things.

Of course, humans beings are not cooperating angels; they also put their heads together to do all kinds of heinous deeds. But such deeds are not usually done to those inside “the group.” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.” The remarkable human capacity for cooperation thus seems to have evolved mainly for interactions within the group. Such group-mindedness is a major cause of strife and suffering in the world today. The solution — more easily said than done — is to find new ways to define the group.

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25wwln-essay-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This makes sense for orangutan populations as well. Basically, the two subspecies were cut off from each other in Sumatra and Borneo, yet they can still interbreed, as has been seen in zoos throughout Europe and North America. Zoos no longer allow the two to interbreed– and carefully maintain distinct genetic lines via breeding programs such as the SSP. ~ Rich

An international research team has discovered new DNA evidence to overturn conventional theories that suggest that the present-day populations of Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) came from Taiwan 4,000 years ago.

The researchers show that population dispersals came earlier, from within the region, and probably resulted from flooding.

The conventional theory, or the ‘out of Taiwan’ model, suggests that the current day populations of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) originate in a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan, driven by rice agriculturalists about 4,000 years ago. This theory was contested 10 years ago by Oxford University scientist, Dr Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, when he suggested the migrations came from within ISEA and resulted from flooding in the region.

This latest study, led by Leeds University and published in this month’s Molecular Biology and Evolution, shows that a substantial fraction of the mitochondrial DNA lines (inherited by female descendants) have been evolving within ISEA for a much longer period, some since modern humans arrived about 50,000 years ago. The DNA lineages show population dispersals at the same time as sea level rises and also show migrations into Taiwan, east out to New Guinea and the Pacific, and west to the Southeast Asian mainland – within the last 10,000 years.

Study co-author Dr Oppenheimer, from the Oxford University School of Anthropology, said: ‘One of my main predictions in the book was that three major floods following the Ice Age forced the inhabitants to escape in boats and flee to less flood-prone regions. By examining mitochondrial DNA from their descendants in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, we now have strong evidence to support the flooding theory and this is possibly why Southeast Asia has a richer store of flood myths, more than any other region in the world.’
Dr Oppenheimer’s book, based on multidisciplinary evidence, writes about the effects of the drowning of a huge ancient continent called ‘Sundaland’ (that extended the Asian landmass as far as Borneo and Java). This happened during the period 15,000 to 7,000 years ago following the last Ice Age. He outlines how rising sea levels in three massive pulses caused flooding and the submergence of the Sunda Continent, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines today.

Martin Richards, the first Professor of Archaeogenetics at Leeds University, who led the interdisciplinary research team, said: ‘I think the study results are going to be a big surprise for many archaeologists and linguists, on whose studies conventional migration theories are based. These population expansions had nothing to do with agriculture, but were most likely to have been driven by climate change, in particular global warming and the resulting sea-level rises at the end of the Ice Age between 15,000 to 7,000 years ago.’

Source: Oxford University
http://www.physorg.com/news130761648.html

By Angela Nitzke
May 22, 2008

Kathy saunters over to a burlap sack covering some mulch and plops down for a little nap.

She seems not to care about the people watching her every move or not to be worried by projections that 92 percent of the chimpanzee range will be threatened by human development.

Kathy is a chimpanzee living at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where scientists have recently begun reaching out to give visitors the chance to see apes through the eyes of a scientist.

Unlike Kathy, zoo researchers are keenly aware of the threats to wild great ape populations and have dual missions in exploring the behavior of great apes and spreading the urgent message on conservation.

“Animal behavior helps us understand more about ourselves as humans. We all have to survive and are constantly evolving.” said Mark Foster, scientist and education program coordinator at the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes.

Habitat loss, hunting and disease are all threats to wild chimps with an estimated population of about 173,000 to 300,000, according to the United Nations Environmental Program. As recently as 50 years ago, millions of chimpanzees were running wild in Africa

“The first step in conserving the world’s ape populations in the wild is to recognize and understand the complexities of these threats. Mitigating the risks takes a deeper understanding of ape behavior,” according to published research by Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Fisher Center.

Researchers there monitor Kathy and the other chimpanzees living in captivity to better understand their intelligence and how their environment influences behavior. The zoo gives visitors the opportunity to try their hand at evaluating the behavior of the resident chimpanzees. Visitors are given a lesson on ape behavior and then use a hand-held device to record what the animal is doing for a set period of time.

The visitor observations aren’t included in official data records. But the mountain of data collected by researchers is used to design better housing for captive apes and to give the animals a stimulating environment. When Kathy gets tired of her burlap nest she sometimes goes “fishing” for ketchup.

The termite fishing mound is a part of the ape cognition research project at the Fisher center. In the wild, chimpanzees have been observed using sticks as tools to get termites out of nests they build underground, in trees or in soil mounds. At the zoo, the human made termite mound has little holes that are occasionally filled with ketchup or mustard instead of termites. Researchers observe how the apes get to the tasty treats.

Lincoln Park is one of the largest zoo-based conservation and research programs, said Foster. Protecting the wild populations of all great apes is one of the primary concerns of researchers, not just the chimpanzees and gorillas that can be seen at Lincoln Park, but bonobos and orangutans as well.

In 20 years, there is a good chance that orangutans won’t exist in the wild, said Foster.

Sumatran orangutans are the most endangered and their population is estimated to be about 7,300. Closely related are the Borneo orangutans that tend to differ slightly in appearance and behavior and are estimated to number around 57,000, according to the United Nations Environmental Program. Both are considered endangered and face a high risk of extinction in the wild.

“The choices we make have huge impacts on great apes,” said Foster. For instance, the choices we make about fats in our foods impact the survival of great apes in the wild. Enter the trans fat debate.

Due to proposed bans on trans fat, many food manufacturers are looking for alternatives to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Research indicates that consumption of trans fat raises low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad cholesterol,” levels, which increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Artificial trans fats form as vegetable oil hardens, a process called hydrogenation.

U.S companies use about 2.5 billion pounds of partially hydrogenated oil annually, mostly for foods such as cookies, cakes and margarine. But if they replaced the trans fat in foods needing a solid fat with palm oil, U.S. palm oil imports would triple over the 2003 level.

That could require 1,240 square miles of new oil palm plantations—an area that represents rainforest habitat for roughly 2,500 orangutans and other animals such as rhinos, elephants and tigers, according to a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

To learn more about the exploring ape behavior program at the Lincoln Park Zoo and for more information about the threats to great ape populations, visit http://www.lpzoo.org. The program hours are 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Tickets are $5.

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Angela Nitzke

Kathy saunters over to a burlap sack covering some mulch and plops down for a little nap.

She seems not to care about the people watching her every move or not to be worried by projections that 92 percent of the chimpanzee range will be threatened by human development.

Kathy is a chimpanzee living at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where scientists have recently begun reaching out to give visitors the chance to see apes through the eyes of a scientist.

Unlike Kathy, zoo researchers are keenly aware of the threats to wild great ape populations and have dual missions in exploring the behavior of great apes and spreading the urgent message on conservation.

“Animal behavior helps us understand more about ourselves as humans. We all have to survive and are constantly evolving.” said Mark Foster, scientist and education program coordinator at the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes.

Habitat loss, hunting and disease are all threats to wild chimps with an estimated population of about 173,000 to 300,000, according to the United Nations Environmental Program. As recently as 50 years ago, millions of chimpanzees were running wild in Africa

“The first step in conserving the world’s ape populations in the wild is to recognize and understand the complexities of these threats. Mitigating the risks takes a deeper understanding of ape behavior,” according to published research by Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Fisher Center.

Researchers there monitor Kathy and the other chimpanzees living in captivity to better understand their intelligence and how their environment influences behavior. The zoo gives visitors the opportunity to try their hand at evaluating the behavior of the resident chimpanzees. Visitors are given a lesson on ape behavior and then use a hand-held device to record what the animal is doing for a set period of time.

The visitor observations aren’t included in official data records. But the mountain of data collected by researchers is used to design better housing for captive apes and to give the animals a stimulating environment. When Kathy gets tired of her burlap nest she sometimes goes “fishing” for ketchup.

The termite fishing mound is a part of the ape cognition research project at the Fisher center. In the wild, chimpanzees have been observed using sticks as tools to get termites out of nests they build underground, in trees or in soil mounds. At the zoo, the human made termite mound has little holes that are occasionally filled with ketchup or mustard instead of termites. Researchers observe how the apes get to the tasty treats.

Lincoln Park is one of the largest zoo-based conservation and research programs, said Foster. Protecting the wild populations of all great apes is one of the primary concerns of researchers, not just the chimpanzees and gorillas that can be seen at Lincoln Park, but bonobos and orangutans as well.

In 20 years, there is a good chance that orangutans won’t exist in the wild, said Foster.

Sumatran orangutans are the most endangered and their population is estimated to be about 7,300. Closely related are the Borneo orangutans that tend to differ slightly in appearance and behavior and are estimated to number around 57,000, according to the United Nations Environmental Program. Both are considered endangered and face a high risk of extinction in the wild.

“The choices we make have huge impacts on great apes,” said Foster. For instance, the choices we make about fats in our foods impact the survival of great apes in the wild. Enter the trans fat debate.

Due to proposed bans on trans fat, many food manufacturers are looking for alternatives to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Research indicates that consumption of trans fat raises low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad cholesterol,” levels, which increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Artificial trans fats form as vegetable oil hardens, a process called hydrogenation.

U.S companies use about 2.5 billion pounds of partially hydrogenated oil annually, mostly for foods such as cookies, cakes and margarine. But if they replaced the trans fat in foods needing a solid fat with palm oil, U.S. palm oil imports would triple over the 2003 level.

That could require 1,240 square miles of new oil palm plantations—an area that represents rainforest habitat for roughly 2,500 orangutans and other animals such as rhinos, elephants and tigers, according to a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

To learn more about the exploring ape behavior program at the Lincoln Park Zoo and for more information about the threats to great ape populations, visit http://www.lpzoo.org. The program hours are 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Tickets are $5.

Source: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=90275

This article was found on the orangutan sanctuary blog Stuart Chapman is head of WWF-UK’s Species Program.

A more pitiful sight it is hard to imagine. Just five months old, tiny Monyong blinks in the harsh equatorial sunlight. Her arm is bandaged - the result of a hunters bullet that killed her mother and shattered Monyong’s humerus bone.

She stares up at Jimmy, her handler who works in the WWF field office, and purses her lips. Her bright eyes dart left and right in what is clearly bewilderment. Saving the Heart of Borneo Orang Utan

Monyong - an Indonesian word that translates as “lippy”, from her endearing habit of pursing her mouth and blowing kisses - is an orang-utan. And the fact she is here illustrates the brutal story of the destruction of one of the world’s last true wildernesses.

For it is a grim time to be an orang-utan, one of the four species of great apes who are mankind’s closest relatives. Native only to Sumatra and Borneo, the huge, shaggy orange-haired tree-dwellers are under threat.

Monyong was very fortunate, the hunters tried to sell her to the local WWF offices in western Borneo after hearing false rumours that they would pay good money. WWF staff convinced them to hand her over for nothing. Now, given luck, Monyong’s arm will heal and she will begin the slow process of rehabilitation. But the fate of individual animals is less important than that of their forests.

Disappearing forest

A World Bank report in 2001 estimated that, by 2010, all the lowland forest in this huge, wild island will be gone, and by 2020 there will be no habitat left outside protected areas in the vast upland wildernesses of Borneo, as loggers continue to destroy the forests at a terrifying rate. Saving the Heart of Borneo Orang Utan

Miraculously, just as there is hope for Monyong, there’s also a glimmer of optimism for her habitat. I had come to Borneo, the orang’s heartland, to learn the extraordinary story of WWF’s attempt to protect the last big wild redoubt of this most charismatic and endearing of creatures.

Rugged hills, carpeted with magnificent forests, straddle the boundary along much of the Indonesia-Malaysia border in the very heartland of Borneo. Most of the island’s rivers are born here as rocky, whitewater streams, maturing as they flow down into the lowlands where they supply freshwater ecosystems throughout Borneo, as well as forming the waterways for the boats of Dayaks and other peoples.

In this unspoiled part of Borneo, upriver longhouses nestle along riverbanks and a patchwork of traditional shifting cultivation disturbs the forest without destroying it. Here, the cries of the gibbons still can be heard through the early morning mist, eagles and hornbills still can be seen, and the forests themselves still retain their magnificent natural architecture across millions of hectares of the least accessible land.

WWF and the Heart of Borneo

There is only one place on the planet where the forests of Southeast Asia can be protected on a large enough scale to be permanently viable. It straddles the transboundary highlands of Indonesia and Malaysia, and reaches out through the foothills into adjacent lowlands and to parts of Brunei. WWF calls this area the Heart of Borneo. Saving the Heart of Borneo Orang Utan

WWF is working with Borneo’s three governments to protect one of the last great wilderness areas in Asia - covering 220,000 sq km (about the size of the UK,) - through a network of protected areas and well-managed, productive forest to ensure the survival of Borneo’s unique biodiversity. The idea is that by 2006, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei (the three nations that own Borneo) will issue a declaration, creating one of the world’s largest and richest national parks.

Based in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, WWF’s Stuart Chapman is coordinating a dedicated team intent on delivering this ambitious mission for the Borneo forests.

“We want to protect this area while it is still whole and functioning as it has for thousands of years,” he says.

“This is one of the last great forest wildernesses on Earth - along with the Congo and the Amazon. And it is much more vulnerable because it is an island.”

Stuart Chapman took me to see this huge, beautiful, daunting forest at the heart of Borneo, where no tourists venture and where you can find truly wild orang-utans.

In the Heart of Borneo

We headed into the Betung Kerihun National Park, a protected area that forms one small part of the proposed “heart of Borneo”.

We were hundreds of miles from civilisation - an exhilarating feeling, but also distinctly worrying. Trekking in this forest is far from easy: there are pretty green shrubs that slice your fingers to ribbons when you touch them, and fine stems covered with razor-sharp barbs that dangle down and cut into your face. If you put your hand down it will be covered with stinging ants or leeches. But worst of all is the heat. By 7am, it was over 30 degrees, and the humidity had me drenched in sweat.

Subdued by these tough conditions, it then came as a moment Saving the Heart of Borneo Orang Utanof indescribable elation when finally we saw three orang-utans - a youngster, aged perhaps four or five, its mother, and a large male.

The first sign that you are near an orang-utan is a tremendous rustling in the tree canopy, 30 metres or more overhead. They are great climbers but, weighing up to 100kg, orang-utans find life in the treetops precarious. Around us crashed great chunks of foliage as the animals tested branches for strength.

The sighting itself was fleeting - the mother, arms outstretched; a few minutes later, the male, swinging across the boughs, his huge jowls attesting to his age and strength. But fleeting though our encounter had been, suddenly the heat, humidity and leeches didn’t matter.

Now or never

WWF’s great project to save Borneo will require little short of a miracle. The declaration, which Stuart Chapman hopes will come in 2006, is only the first of many challenges to be met.

Tackling illegal logging is another - throughout our time in the rainforest the threat to this fragile habitat was evident. Huge rafts of logs clog every waterway, stamped and painted with the serial numbers of the illegal loggers.

There was much talk of the importance of “sustainable development” - a way of meeting the needs of people today without squandering natural resources for future generations - but this will take some doing in this very poor country . Saving the Heart of Borneo Orang Utan

To us, the demise of the last great ape of Asia would be a global tragedy. But to the thousands of people on this wild, beautiful island, people for whom clean water, medicines and electricity are still an unlikely dream, the fate of the “man of the forest” is of minimal importance.

“The full diversity of these forests cannot be maintained if they are reduced to a patchwork. The Heart of Borneo aims to maintain very large blocks of inter-connected forest, without which hundreds, or even thousands, of species become extinct. The Heart of Borneo will ensure water security, food security and cultural survival for the people of Borneo. This will help to alleviate poverty. In the long term, it will save the island from the ultimate threat of deforestation and increased impacts from droughts and fires,” Stuart Chapman explained.

“We have to make the Heart of Borneo a political and economic reality before its too late. It really is now or never.”

http://orang-utan-sanctuary.blogspot.com/2008/05/saving-heart-of-borneo.html