Indonesia: Fragile Comeback Among Kutai Orangutan Population

Jakarta Globe 10 Dec 13;

A prime habitat for the endangered orangutan in East Kalimantan’s Kutai National Park has only just recovered from a series of major fires that tore through the area in the 1980s, a conservationist says.

Anne. R. Russon, the director of the Kutai Orangutan Project, told Antaranews.com on Monday that following the fires of 1982-1983 and 1987-1988, “the conservation area is already in recovery.”

She said one indicator of the recovery was the increase in the local orangutan population.

Russon, a researcher from York University in Toronto who has been researching orangutans in Kalimantan for 25 years, four of them in Kutai, cautioned that the national park still faced a lot of dangers that could also threaten the orangutan population.

“We’re grateful that the source of food for orangutans in Kutai National Park is improving, but I’m still worried about the hunting and the conflict with coal and palm oil companies, which can disturb the endangered species,” she said.

“I am very concerned that orangutan hunting and torture still happens because the population of orangutans in the wild has been reduced to only 40,000 to 45,000 individuals.”

Russon said there were between 1,000 and 2,000 orangutan in the 198,629-hectare national park that straddles the three districts of East Kutai, Kutai Kartanegara and Bontang, but that the number of cases of people killing orangutans had stoked international concern.

She said that during her research, she found indigenous groups still hunting orangutans for their meat. Reports of the apes being killed for food are much rarer than reports of deaths at the hands of farmers or plantation workers who consider them pests.

The latest recorded orangutan killing occurred on Nov. 3, Antaranews.com reported, when two residents of Pontianak, West Kalimantan, were charged by police for allegedly killing and eating an orangutan.

They were released last week after initially facing the possibility of up to five years in prison for violating the 1990 Natural Resources Conservation Law.

Authorities have recorded at least four cases of people killing endangered orangutans in and around the Pontianak within the past four years.

In 2010, a female orangutan died in Pontianak’s Sungai Pinyuh subdistrict after being captured by villagers with her baby.

In 2012, another orangutan was killed near Pontianak’s Parit Wak Dongkak subdistrict after sustaining serious burns when locals set a tree near the orangutan’s location on fire. The animal died while being treated for its injuries.

In October this year, an orangutan was found dead in Pontianak’s Peniraman village, with its skull reportedly bashed in.

Orangutans are faced with extinction from poaching and the rapid destruction of their forest habitat, driven largely by land clearance for palm oil and paper plantations.

Wildlife experts warn that shrinking habitats have increased contact between the forest-dwelling orangutan and villagers and is the primary cause of an upswing in human-on-animal violence in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Illegal Timber Seizures a Drop in the Ocean at Kutai National Park
Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 9 Dec 13;

Forestry police in East Kalimantan’s Kutai National Park have this year managed to confiscate a total of 80 cubic meters of illegally logged timber, much of it endangered species.

Hernowo, chief of management for the park’s Sangata I area said on Sunday that the Rp 600 million ($50,000) worth of timber they were able to secure from illegal loggers this year was a small amount in comparison to the estimated total illegal logging in the park.

“Those [were secured] from the regular patrol team and the joint team. There are many other cases that are yet to be revealed, because that timber was gathered from an area of 42,000 hectares, which is guarded by only 20 people,” said Hernowo, adding that just six suspects had been arrested this year to date.

“Most of them [illegal loggers] cut Borneo ironwood and meranti and the price at which it is sold is very high.”

The Borneo ironwood tree, known locally as ulin , was the single most targeted timber species in the park, because of high demand for it in East Asia, where it is typically smuggled by way of Malaysia.

The wood, described as one of the densest and most durable timbers in the world, typically sells for around $2,000 per cubic meter abroad, but it is banned for export by the Indonesian government.

In addition to insufficient law enforcement officers in the area, the existence of communities living inside the Kutai National Park was among the greatest contributing factors hampering the elimination of illegal logging in the park, Hernowo said. In many cases, he said, local residents work together with illegal loggers, warning them of any patrol officers.

According to data by the Central Statistics Agency (BSP), a total of 26,800 people have been living inside the national park since the 1990s, where they make a living out of farming and breeding livestock.

“However, lands inside the national park are mostly owned by employees of companies who had purchased the land from local residents who no longer live there,” he said.

The Kutai National Park has a total area of approximately 199,000 hectares, and comprises coastal mangroves, lowlands rainforest and freshwater swamps.

It is among the most important conservation areas in the country with vulnerable and rare fauna making their home within its borders, including orangutan and proboscis monkey.

Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said last week illegal logging had become a major threat to the nation, with the potential to accelerate extinctions and worsen flooding.

“Landslides and floods will continue to haunt [Indonesia] and Indonesian animals will become extinct if this [illegal logging] continues,” Zulkifli said during National Tree-Planting Day in West Sumatra on Wednesday.

He added that discussions on the draft bill on prevention and eradication of illegal logging, which includes severe penalties for forestry crimes, was still ongoing, and that he hoped the bill would soon be ratified.