Forest Fires Add to Orangutan's Demise in Borneo and Sumatra
12/28/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Forest Fires Add to Orangutan's Demise in Borneo and Sumatra
Source: Miami Herald via New York Times Service
Status: Copyright, contact source to reprint
Date: 12/28/97
Byline: Seth Mydans, New York Times service
Published Sunday, December 28, 1997, in the Miami Herald
Forest fires add to orangutans' demise
TANJUNG PUTING, Indonesia -- Terrified orangutans have been
fleeing their jungle homes as never before, driven by vast
forest fires and choking smoke that have swept across their
habitat in Borneo and Sumatra since the summer.
By the hundreds, they are being killed by frightened villagers
and plantation workers protecting their crops. Females
especially are being killed so their babies can be taken to
fuel an illegal trade in young orangutans.
More than 100 animals, some of them badly injured, have been
rescued by conservationists from local traders and villagers
who have locked them in cages, for sale or to be kept as pets.
Most of these are juveniles who have not yet learned to live
on their own in the jungle. It will take years of training to
teach many of them the lessons they would have learned from
their mothers: how to build their nightly nests, and how to
feed themselves on the 400 varieties of fruit and bark and
grubs that form their natural diet.
Critical situation
Stark as it is, the disaster of the fires has only worsened a
crisis that is threatening the future of one of humans'
closest relatives, said Barita Manullang, an orangutan expert
with the World Wild Fund for Nature Indonesia Program.
``Actually,'' Manullang said, ``without the fires themselves
the orangutans are already under severe pressure from loss of
habitat. Now the situation is much more critical. This is, I
guess, the worst situation for orangutan life in this
century.''
``Now they really need to escape from the fires and the heat
and also the haze, very thick haze,'' he added, pointing out
that the smoke had also stunted the growth of jungle fruits,
which will lead animals to starvation in the year ahead.
Until the haze and fires abated recently, other jungle animals
like tigers, elephants, Malayan sun bears and flying foxes
also fled, often to die at the hands of villagers.
Declining population
Most scientists estimate today's orangutan population at
20,000 to 30,000 in the wild, all of them on the Indonesian
island of Sumatra and on Borneo, which is divided among
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
The greatest threat to their survival is the devastation of
their habitat, which has accelerated sharply over the last
decade as big logging companies have stripped the forests. The
World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that their range has
shrunk by more than 90 percent over the last half-century,
along with a huge reduction in their numbers.
The fires have only quickened the destruction.
``It's very scary,'' said Birute Galdikas, a Canadian who is a
pioneer in orangutan research. She has worked with the animals
here in Central Kalimantan Province for 26 years.
``We are looking at the demise of the orangutan as a species
in the wild, which basically is what happened to American
bison,'' she said. ``It's a terrible situation, and
unfortunately it's not going to change. The illegal logging
and the clearing of trees for plantations are absolutely
demolishing the forests.''
Fragile species
Orangutans are a fragile species, breeding slowly and
demanding a wide range to forage for food. The males roam the
forests alone, devouring huge quantities of fruits; the
females raise their young in more settled territories, giving
birth just once every eight years or so, then spending several
years raising their offspring.
It is against the law to own an orangutan in Indonesia, but
the laws are widely flouted. Young orangutans are utterly
charming -- wide-eyed, playful and trusting -- and local
people, particularly childless couples, often adopt them as
members of the family.
Pet orangutans are sometimes dressed in human clothes, given
pillows for their beds and fed together with the family,
people here say. Sometimes they are taught to perform simple
tasks as servants, like opening doors and fetching food.
When they are fully grown -- some reaching five and a half
feet and 150 pounds -- orangutans can be unruly. Their owners
often dispose of them, sometimes selling them to traders for
zoos.
With the backing of national and local officials, Galdikas
began recovering these pets and training them at her base,
Camp Leakey, to live in the wild. Like Dian Fossey, who lived
with gorillas, and Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees,
Galdikas was a disciple of the paleontologist Louis S.B.
Leakey.
Over the years, she has helped more than 100 orangutans return
to the forests. But many of these remain immigrants in their
own habitat and spend much of their time close to Camp Leakey,
their second home, where they receive daily feedings and beg
for treats from visitors.
On one recent day when there was no feeding, a large female
named Yuni, with her baby clinging to her neck, waited
hopefully outside the kitchen door of a camp dormitory,
together with several cats.
`Tough-love policy'
A newer camp in East Kalimantan, run by a researcher named
Willie Smits, pursues more of a tough-love policy, offering
fewer comforts and pushing the animals back into the forests
more forcefully.
Smits' camp has become the halfway house for orangutans
rescued from the fires, and more than 100 now wait there in
makeshift cages for fires to be put out.
On a recent tour of the island, Manullang said, he was shocked
to discover how many others remained in captivity in private
homes.
``It's very scary,'' he said. ``They come into the villages
and rarely can they find any trees, so they just lie on the
ground. They invade the people's gardens and plantations.
People are scared to death to see those wild beasts, so they
kill them, particularly the mums, the adults. They kill the
mothers and steal the babies.''