Muguntan Vanar The Star 18 Oct 10;
KOTA KINABALU: A new orang utan rope bridge has been created in the Lower Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary to allow the primates living within the fragmented forests to reconnect with each other.
The 40m-long rope bridge, made of fire hoses, was set up across Sungai Takala, a tributary of Sungai Kinabatangan in another effort by local and international conservationists to ensure that orang utans in trapped fragmented forests do not become extinct.
The teams involved took three days to complete the project.
The project, which was undertaken by the Sabah Wildlife Department, the HUTAN non-governmental organisation and Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), was funded by Borneo Conservation Trust Japan and expertise was provide by Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd.
“Genetic studies, which were carried out in the Lower Kinabatangan forest fragments, showed that orang utans are estimated to go extinct within our lifetime if they are not reconnected through schemes like the rope bridges,” Sabah Wildlife department director Dr Laurentius Ambu said.
DGFC director Dr Benoit Goosens said the rope bridges were important in efforts to stop in-breeding among orang utans within the fragmented forests.
The project was initiated by the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project seven years ago,
“If we do not set up a corridor, substantial levels of inbreeding will occur, and this will lead to their extinction in the most isolated fragments of the wildlife sanctuary,” he added.
Goosens said similar bridges will be set up at tributaries in the vicinity of DGFC following a survey carried out by HUTAN last year which identified sites suitable for bridge construction to alleviate the issues of orang utan population fragmentation.
Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd operations director Simon Amos supervised the construction of the rope bridge.
He added rigging and tree climbing were essential skills needed to establish the bridge and the camera trap, which will eventually capture evidence that orang utans are actually using the bridge.
Bridges built to help Borneo orangutans meet mates
Julia Zappei, Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Oct 10;
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Endangered orangutans on Borneo island are using fire hoses slung across rivers by humans to help them move around isolated forests to potentially meet new mates and boost the species' chances for survival, an environmental group said Monday.
Malaysian authorities are building more of the makeshift bridges after some orangutans were spotted using them over the past year, said Marc Ancrenaz, co-founder of French-based conservation group Hutan, which is working with Malaysian state wildlife department officials on orangutan protection.
Conservationists estimate about 11,000 orangutans live in Malaysia's Sabah state in Borneo, but many are isolated from each other because swaths of forest have been cut for development, logging and oil palm plantations.
Environmental groups and wildlife authorities have been hooking up old fire hoses strung together between trees on different sides of rivers to help orangutans — which cannot swim — swing or walk across them. The first bridge was set up seven years ago, but it was only last year that an orangutan was captured on camera using one of them.
Witnesses have seen others doing so since then, prompting officials to build more bridges.
"It takes a while for the animals to get used to it. ... If we are not able to reconnect them, they will go extinct very soon," Ancrenaz said.
But the bridges are "just a quick fix" because the long-term solution would be reforestation, Ancrenaz said.
Benoit Goossens, an adviser for the Sabah Wildlife Department, said more bridges will soon also be hung across oil palm plantation moats.
Studies of the orangutan population in part of Sabah indicated they might go extinct within 60 years due to inbreeding and loss of habitat unless the jungle patches are reconnected.
Hutan estimates the number of orangutans in Sabah has decreased eight-fold in the past 15 years, though conservation efforts in recent times have slowed the decline.
Last year, Sabah's government announced it would bar companies from planting palm oil and other crops near rivers to preserve the natural habitat of orangutans and other threatened animals. Authorities working with the World Wildlife Fund have also pledged to replant trees in crucial territory over the next five years.
Orang utan get 'highway' of fire hoses
The New Straits Times 21 Oct 10;
KINABATANGAN: A rope bridge made of fire hoses was erected across Sungai Takala, a tributary of the Kinabatangan river, in Lot 6 of the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary to provide a corridor for the isolated orang utan population in the area.
The project undertaken by the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), non-governmental organisation, HUTAN, and Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), was funded by the Borneo Conservation Trust Japan and supported by expertise from Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd.
"Genetic studies have been carried out by Cardiff University, HUTAN and our department.
"The data shows that orang utan populations in the Lower Kinabatangan forest fragments are expected to become extinct in our lifetime if they are not reconnected through schemes like the rope bridges," said SWD director Dr Laurentius Ambu.
The project was initiated by HUTAN's Kinabatangan orang utan conservation project seven years ago after genetic data showed that non-intervention by corridor establishment would produce substantial levels of inbreeding and lead to orang utan extinction in the most isolated fragments of the wildlife sanctuary.
The building of the bridge was supervised by Simon Amos, the operations director at Ropeskills Rigging Sdn Bhd, who has just opened an indoor climbing centre at Likas Sport Complex in Kota Kinabalu.
"Rigging and tree climbing were essential skills needed to establish the bridge and the camera trap which will eventually capture evidence that orang utans use the bridge," said Amos.
"With the help of Japanese friends from BCT Japan and staff and students from DGFC, it took us three days to establish the bridge above the 40-m wide Sungai Takala."
DGFC director Dr Benoit Goossens said similar bridges would be set up at tributaries in the vicinity of DGFC following a survey carried out by HUTAN last year which identified sites suitable for bridge construction to alleviate the issues of orang utan population fragmentation.
