Save the orangutans / Save the world……

 

 

 

 

 

The jungle rises steeply in front of us and we cross the river balanced precariously on a dug out canoe. The wall of dense green foliage looks impenetrable but a narrow, muddy trail has been carved out and the ranger leads us to a small clearing and a feeding platform. We only have to wait a couple of minutes before an orangutan comes swinging gracefully through the trees. It’s a female, and her scrawny baby clings on tightly as she stuffs bunches of bananas into her mouth and scoffs handfuls of milk from the rangers bucket. In Malaysian orangutan translates as man of the forest, and these gentle creatures share 97% of human DNA. Their movements are so graceful and seem at odds with their awkward appearance – their oversized heads, huge shoulders, pot bellies and four limbs acting interchangeably as arms and legs. 

 

Gunung Leuser National Park, Northern Sumatra is one of only two places in the world where orangutans can be observed in the wild. The Bohorok rehabilitation centre operated here from 1973 – 2004 and saw 200 orangutans rescued from captivity and reintroduced to the forest. The feeding platform is the last vestige of the program and is a ‘fall back’ for any semi wild orangutans struggling to find food. Coming back down the trail we see a huge male sprawled across a thick branch and further on another female hanging nonchalantly from a tree trunk. I chat with the ranger who says that he has the best job in the world. He tells me of the day his father died and as he sat weeping in the jungle, an orangutan appeared and embraced him. “Sometimes the orangs are more human than humans,” he says.

 

A visit to the Rehabilitation centre and the quirky jungle village of Bukit Lawang which sits beside it, was once the highlight of many tourist itineraries. But one dark November night in 2003, a flash flood sent a 10 meter wave roaring through the valley destroying everything in its wake. The orangutans, high in the trees survived but more than 300 people died that night and much of the village was washed away. The road to recovery has been slow but five years on the village is once again flourishing as visitors are lured by the peaceful atmosphere, authentic jungle treks and the chance to see orangutans in the wild.

 

About orangutans

Millions of orangutans once roamed the forests that stretch from China to Java, now they can only be found in small pockets of Borneo and Sumatra and their very existence lies under grave threat.  In the last 2o years the Sumatran population has decreased from 12,000 to an estimated 6500 and has been classified as “Critically Endangered” by the IUCN, the World Conservation Union. 

 

The Pet trade

Although protected by legislation dating from 1931, which prohibits the owning, killing, or capture of orangutans, they are still in high demand for the pet trade. A baby orangutan can fetch up to $500 in Jakarta and $5000 in Taiwan. A common method for capturing a baby is to track a mother, fell the tree she is in then shoot or club her to death.  Environmentalists say that for every orangutan in captivity at least three babies and their mothers have been killed by poachers or died from mistreatment. Orangutans breed more slowly than any other primate, with the female producing a baby on average only once every 7-8 years. A female will usually have no more than 3 offspring in her lifetime which means that orangutan populations grow very slowly, and take a long time to recover from habitat disturbance and hunting.

 

Shrinking habitat

 

It is estimated that the huge forest fires that swept though Indonesia in 1997 destroyed at least 30% of their habitat and drove orangutans to villages where they became easy prey for poachers. Clear felling for rice paddies, rubber plantations and the valuable hardwood trade also forces orangutans out of the forest in search of food. Deemed as agricultural pests by plantations owners, they are often killed.

 

Indonesia has one of the highest tropical forest loss rates in the world; an estimated 70% of Sumatran forest cover has now been decimated. The Indonesian government admits that the rampant destruction of its forests, estimated at over two million hectares a year has been an ecological and conservation disaster, yet illegal logging and forest conversion remain out of control. Many blame over-logging for the flash flood that devastated Bukit Lawang.

 

Palm Oil, the biggest threat of all

Now, orangutans face the gravest threat of all and that is an insatiable global demand for palm oil, a popular vegetable oil used in many food products, as well as cosmetics and increasingly in bio fuel. Ninety per cent of the world’s palm-oil exports come from the plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia. The low land forests of Borneo and Sumatra – the last remaining habitats for orangutans, are the areas favored for conversion. Over 80% of the land that has been deforested in Sumatra over the last 20 years can be attributable to the planting of palm oil and all unprotected low lying forest is at risk.

 

Growing palm oil is a lucrative business and the price of crude palm oil has risen steadily. Impoverished land owners see few financial alternatives and many give up their land to become small-holders or to work on the plantations.

 

The problem with bio fuel

The biggest irony is the use of palm oil for bio fuel, a supposedly ‘green’ fuel, which has been heralded as a low carbon solution to climate change. Rainforests in some of the worlds most biodiverse eco systems are being clear felled at an alarming rate and replaced by oil palms. This quest for green fuel is actually causing more damage to the climate than the fossil fuels it was designed to replace.  The European Union has set targets for ten per cent of all transport fuel to come from crops by 2020. Currently, over seven million hectares in Sumatra are utilized as oil palm plantations, and the plan is to extend this by a further 20 million hectares.  Fires are used to clear the land, and peat bogs are drained to plant oil palms, a process which releases hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, making Indonesia the third highest contributor of CO2 emissions in the world. Environmentalists claim that currently, more carbon emissions result from deforestation and peat fires than are produced by the entire global transport sector. When a hectare of primary rainforest is cleared it releases around 65 times as much carbon into the atmosphere as can be saved annually by using the palm oil as a bio fuel.

 

The use of palm oil in itself is not the problem; the problem lies in the destruction of primary rainforest to grow the oil palms. There is plenty of degraded land available in Sumatra and Borneo, but palm oil companies can increase their profits by cutting down rainforest and selling the timber. The international community needs to demand that oil-palm concessions are not granted in forested areas, and that local retailers and manufacturers only source their palm oil from non-destructive plantations.

 

What about us?

The thing is its not just about animal lovers and conservationists wanting to ‘save the cute furry animals’. Yes, they are incredibly endearing and anyone who has ever had a close encounter with an orangutan can testify to what a magical experience it is, but the orangutans are just the tip off the iceberg. They are recognized as a “keystone” species for conservation, as they play an important part in forest regeneration through the fruit and seeds they eat.  If they become extinct there will be a knock-on effect on thousands of other species. Including humans, because we cannot survive without the oxygen created by the rainforests.

 

The rainforests here in Sumatra are considered to be the lungs of the earth, absorbing toxic carbon emissions and releasing life-giving oxygen. Locals here are on the frontline and face the dilemma, Save the jungle ? Save the world; or plant oil palms and feed the family?

 

Eco Tourism in Tangkahan

The tiny and remote village of Tangkahan is a prime example of grass roots conservation where the community rejected the lure of palm oil and decided instead to set up eco-tourism. I travel by trail bike from Bukit Lawang on a muddy potholed trail passing through rural villages, rubber plantations, the occasional forest and miles and miles and miles of oil palm plantations.

 

Sitting on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park, the village is infinitely peaceful and provides a true wilderness experience with just four guesthouses and an elephant camp. Of the seven elephants that live here, three came from Bukit Lawang, emerging from the jungle just days before the flood. They were in a frenzied state and refused to go back. Locals were at a loss as to what to do with them; you can’t have wild elephants living in the village, so they were trucked to Tangkahan to join the Conservation Response Unit, which uses elephants to patrol the jungle in search of poachers and illegal loggers. It is possible to join the four day elephant patrol treks to Bukit Lawang, but also to do two or three hour treks through the jungle. The experience is totally authentic; there are no circus tricks here, just happy, well loved elephants. I stay at the Jungle lodge, perched tantalizingly over the river and share dinner with the local guides. The talk inevitably turns to palm oil, they are all too aware of the conflict but hope to lead others by example and show that there are alternatives. “One step at a time” someone tells me, “We can’t do much, but at least we can do something” adds another. 

 

SOS

The key lies in education and SOS, the Sumatran orangutan society runs a number of programs to this end, claiming, “The success of orangutan conservation in Indonesia lies in the hands of the local people”.  Their aim is to empower the next generation of Indonesian conservationists through grass roots projects focusing on wildlife conservation. Programs include: Restoring deforested land: Touring educational road shows: The development of a conservation curriculum for schools in North Sumatra: Community forestry schemes to reinforce national park buffer zones and provide sustainable alternative incomes for people living adjacent to natural orangutan habitat: As well as a tree planting program that has seen the planting of over a quarter of a million indigenous tree seedlings to date.

 

Hidden paradise

I wake early the next morning to birdsong and monkey chatter, my body aches from the bike and elephant rides, so I swim across river to a crevice in the rocks where hot springs bubble up. Completely alone, I soak in the therapeutic waters and soak up the tranquility of the ancient forest.  My guide Rinto arrives and leads me upstream to a gorge and a picturesque waterfall where I get a jungle massage from the pummeling water. We then drift gently downstream on tubes, stopping at Pantai kupu kupu (butterfly beach). Rinto tells me that if a butterfly lands on you it will bring great luck. But as I sit by the river in this hidden paradise, with hundreds of brightly coloured butterflies flitting around me, I already feel incredibly lucky.