Tuesday, August 7, 2007
WAR in Indonesia's Aceh province has been a blessing in disguise for the orangutan, preventing logging firms and palm oil estates from entering one of the world's richest expanses of rainforest.
This has helped the critically endangered mammals flourish, at least for now.
"If the civil war hadn't happened and they all operate and clear the forest, we'll be dealing with a few hundred orangutans now," said Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.
"And if they clear these extra bits of forests here in the near future, then the same thing will happen again. All the orangutan will die. They don't sort of like pack their bags and move somewhere else. They stay and die," he said in North Sumatra's provincial capital, Medan.
The war in Aceh in on the tip of Sumatra had prevented logging concessions and palm oil estates, which had been granted permits during the 1990s, from operating around the so-called Leuser Ecosystem — the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, rhinos, leopards and elephants can be found in one area.
The 2.6-million hectare Leuser Ecosystem, roughly the size of Belgium and the largest protected rainforest area in Southeast Asia, covers parts of Aceh and adjacent North Sumatra province.
"By preventing them from operating has given us a second chance to save the orangutan. We may have lost around 5,000 orangutans between 1995 and 2000, and then that suddenly stabilised because of the civil war," said Singleton.
There are about 7,300 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild. The number has been relatively steady in recent years but is half as many as the early 1990s, when there were estimated to be about 15,000.
Reuters
This has helped the critically endangered mammals flourish, at least for now.
"If the civil war hadn't happened and they all operate and clear the forest, we'll be dealing with a few hundred orangutans now," said Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.
"And if they clear these extra bits of forests here in the near future, then the same thing will happen again. All the orangutan will die. They don't sort of like pack their bags and move somewhere else. They stay and die," he said in North Sumatra's provincial capital, Medan.
The war in Aceh in on the tip of Sumatra had prevented logging concessions and palm oil estates, which had been granted permits during the 1990s, from operating around the so-called Leuser Ecosystem — the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, rhinos, leopards and elephants can be found in one area.
The 2.6-million hectare Leuser Ecosystem, roughly the size of Belgium and the largest protected rainforest area in Southeast Asia, covers parts of Aceh and adjacent North Sumatra province.
"By preventing them from operating has given us a second chance to save the orangutan. We may have lost around 5,000 orangutans between 1995 and 2000, and then that suddenly stabilised because of the civil war," said Singleton.
There are about 7,300 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild. The number has been relatively steady in recent years but is half as many as the early 1990s, when there were estimated to be about 15,000.
Reuters