Released orangutans face shrinking space
Cameron Broadhurst, The Jakarta Post
Tanjung Puting, C. Kalimantan - On a raised platform, he sits aloof from the others, head of a forest dynasty, raising soft yellow fruit slowly to his mouth. Drinking from his urn, he glances around indifferently.
Gulombana is the ruler of a banana kingdom.
“When no other male can defeat him, he’s king,” said Camp Tanguey manager Pasatri. New one has to beat the old one.”
But no serious challenger has come forth, so at this camp in Central Kalimantan’s Tanjung Puting Park, Gulombana took center stage during the 9 a.m. breakfast feeding. Female, male and infant orangutans were forced wait their turn.
The orangutans here that have been released into the rainforest are not dependent on the offerings provided. Some days many will turn up to eat, other days only one or two. They now know how to find nourishment on their own in the jungle, a learning process Pasatri said often takes two years.
Yet the population here has grown from 20 to 30 during the 2003-2007 period, mostly from new babies born to female orangutans, who breed only once every eight years.
From high up in the trees mother and child Siswa and Suitop, descend gracefully to the ground and clamber onto the platform. Gulombana peers at them without great interest, but pulls a few bananas closer to himself.
Further up the river at Camp Leaky, the famed original research site of conservationist Dr. Birut Galdikas, the apes take their daily bananas at lunch.
Here, said camp worker JJ Munajad, three females are pregnant: Princess, April and Carey. And while their babies will be born at camp, other infants are brought in from captivity each year.
Since Leaky’s inception in 1971, over 200 of the great apes have passed through its care, with the current population of rehabilitating and released orangutans numbering around 100.
Sometimes they leave forever, disappearing off into the jungle. Other times they arrive from the wild to stay.
But while the animals may be safe or even increasing in population in and around the camps at Tanjung Puting, in other parts of the park they can still come under threat from fires and poachers. Even though the threat of illegal logging has largely been eradicated here, the park area itself lies within the boundaries of West Kotawaringen regency.
Under the local autonomy laws, JJ said a regency could decide to use the park for other purposes such as logging or palm plantations.
About 30 kilometers to the east of Central Kalimantan, near the provincial capital Palangkaraya, Nyaru Menteng houses the province’s other orangutan rehabilitation center.
Michael Sowards of U.S.-based The Orangutan Conservancy, which funds the work there, said that before an ape can be reintroduced to the wild, technicians and scientists monitor each orangutan closely to decide whether the animal is at ease climbing in trees and foraging for itself.
For those who come to know and love the great apes, their release is an emotional time.
“It’s pretty awesome to see them come out of the cage and climb around,” said Sowards.
Executive director of the Bornean Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS-Indonesia) Aldren Priyadjati agrees: “I see in their eyes, it’s quite amazing. They’re happy to be there.”
Yet no new releases have occurred in the last two years. BOS-Indonesia, which runs Nyaru Menteng, is surveying three possible areas: two in Berau and Beratus in East Kalimantan, and a site in Baktikop, north Central Kalimantan. Because the Bornean orangutans are divided into three subspecies, animals from the different areas cannot be mixed without polluting the gene pool.
With over 600 orangutans at Nyaru Menteng alone, space is tight and some are ready to leave.
A male orangutan, said Aldren, needs more than 1 square kilometer of ground for itself.
“Releasing (of orangutans) is not balancing the destruction of the forest,” he said. “Releasing and translocation are almost nothing compared to destruction.”
Because “normal” conditions are now difficult to find, orangutans are forced to live more closely together than may be comfortable.
In Baktikop, BOS-Indonesia is surveying an area of about 100,000 square hectares of forest as a possible release site. A small number of wild orangutans have already been translocated there. As the land is higher in elevation than the wetlands of Menteng, whether the new forest is suitable for the nourishment and shelter of rehabilitated animals will be determined later.
If it is, they will closely monitor the animals, something Aldren says is “a moral obligation” after the release itself.
But first, BOS-Indonesia needs a number of positive responses from the tangle of agencies concerned, including the local government and the Forestry Ministry.
In the meantime, the orangutans of Nyaru Menteng and East Kalimantan await a new wilderness - a new home.
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/
