Doomed: the last apes of Borneo
Copyright © The Age Company Ltd 2000
November 11, 2000
By LINDSAY MURDOCH
BALIKPAPAN, EAST KALIMANTAN
He's tiny, dishevelled and covered in urine. His sad eyes flicker in hope. But the endangered orang-utan on sale at a Jakarta market faces a bleak future.
"Take this one," urges the woman seller, flouting Indonesian law that is supposed to protect Asia's only great ape. "It's very young ... the older ones have been held longer and are more aggressive."
Orang-utans will be extinct in the wild in five to 10 years if rainforest destruction continues at its present levels in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, the only places where they now live, environmentalists say.
The Indonesian Government estimates that 1.8 million hectares of its forests have been destroyed every year over the last 12 years, admitting an "ecological disaster".
Alarmed foreign countries, led by the European Union, have put the government in Jakarta on notice that it must take drastic urgent action to stop the destruction. They warned at a donors' conference in Tokyo last month that almost $US5 billion ($A9.5 billion) in international support for the bankrupt country would be in jeopardy unless it carries out earlier promises to crackdown on illegal logging protected by corrupt security forces, local administrators and politicians.
The orang-utans are also under threat from hunting and smuggling at a time of worsening unemployment and poverty in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation.
Traders use only one way to capture baby orang-utans in the wild, which are just as helpless and dependent on their mother as human babies. They fell trees where they are. When the pair hit the ground the mother is shot or clubbed to death. Often the babies do not survive the fall or captivity. Environmentalists say that for every pet orang-utan in captivity at least three babies and their mothers have been killed by poachers or from mistreatment.
"The situation these highly intelligent animals are facing is catastrophic," says Adi Susilo, the head of the Wanariset Orang-utan Reintroduction Station near Balikpapan. "These animals are facing extinction. Virtually nothing is being done to save them."
The International Organisation for the Conservation of Nature ranks Indonesia as the country with the greatest number of threatened mammal and bird species. Among Indonesia's military elite it is trendy to keep orang-utans and other exotic animals and birds as pets. A daughter of the disgraced former ruler Suharto keeps a rare tiger in her back yard.
In a just-released report, the World Bank accuses Indonesian public officials of being involved in a flourishing illegal logging trade that costs an estimated $US650 million ($A1.2 billion) in lost revenues to the state each year.
Of 23 unlicensed sawmills located in the Bukit Tigapuluh National Park on Sumatra, 12 are backed by the army, three by the provincial Forestry Department, two by the district Public Works Department and one by the police, the bank says.
The government has promised that past mistakes in managing Indonesia's tropical forests, which are ranked third in size after Brazil and Zaire, must not be repeated.
But environmental groups and donor countries say its efforts to stop them have been weak. "Indonesia's development over the last 30 years has focused mainly on economic growth and has thus led to over-exploitation for the forest resources far beyond their capacity," the Minister for Agriculture, Bungaran Saragih, told the Tokyo meeting.
"This has resulted in enormous degradation. The damage to Indonesia's forests not only harms the country by negatively affecting the long-term economic development but is also an ecological disaster for the people of Indonesia and the world."
As with those behind the illegal mining that environmentalists warn is also causing ecological disasters across the Indonesian archipelago, the identities of the powerful and rich people behind the illegal logging trade are well known in Jakarta. A prominent Indonesian MP, Abdul Rasyid, owns a logging company blamed for the rapid destruction of the TanjungPuting National Park in Kalimantan.
A joint report by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency and Telapak Indonesian Foundation estimates that at least 600,000 cubic metres of timber is being looted from the park each month.
TanjungPuting is one of only three protected areas in Indonesia where orang-utans are found in sufficient numbers to ensure their long-term viability.
"Although much of the responsibility for Indonesia's forest crisis rests with former president Suharto and his coterie of family members and close business cronies, there has been an upsurge in illegal logging since he was removed from power," the report said.
Two environmentalists investigating illegal logging in TanjungPuting early this year were kidnapped, assaulted and held captive for three days by thugs from Mr Rasyid's company.
Mr Rasyid, a member of Golkar, the former ruling party that kept Mr Suharto in power for 32 years, accused the two of trespassing.
"There is no question of what is happening, no question of who is behind it, and no question of the lawlessness it creates," the joint report said.
"The only question is whether the government has the courage to remove it."
Millions of orang-utans once lived in forests stretching from China to Java, but now only an estimated 15,000 survive on Borneo and only between 5000 and 8000 on Sumatra.
Mr Susilo, of the Wanariset station, says forest fires that destroyed vast areas of Borneo in 1997 greatly added to the orang-utan's woes.
"Combined with smuggling, legal and illegal logging, it's a nightmare situation for the orang-utan," Mr Susilo says.
"Maybe 30 per cent of their habitat was destroyed by fire in 1997 alone. You can say it's tragedy heaped upon tragedy."
Female orang-utans do not reproduce until they are between 12 and 15. In a life-span of about 45 they only give birth to three or four babies.
Human diseases such as tuberculosis have emerged as another threat.
Many orang-utans are kept as pets when young and then abandoned later when they become older and troublesome.
Of 208 orang-utans at the Wanariset station, which attempts to rehabilitate domesticated animals into the wild, 38 have found to be hepatitis B carriers. They cannot be set free for fear for infecting others.
The only legal rehabilitation in Indonesia, Wanariset has released 312 orang-utans into the wild since 1991 when it was set up with Dutch funding. But its facilities are now full and more orang-utans are being brought to it almost every week. "Maybe we could accept three or five more, but not 10 or 20," Mr Susilo says. "And if we went into the villages we could easily find more animals that need to be rescued."
At markets in Jakarta baby orang-utans sell for about $US500 ($A950) after being brought from Borneo or Sumatra.
Although trading and keeping orang-utans as pets has been against the law in Indonesia since the 1930s, traders will lead potential customers to them on request at many markets across the archipelago.
In Taiwan, a popular destination for smugglers, orang-utans fetch about US$5000. In the United States they are known to have sold for as much as US$25,000.
People wanting to donate to help rehabilitate captured orang-utans into the wild can contact the Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation through websites:
http://www.redcube.nl/bos or
http://www.orangutan.com