Protecting Lamandau for people and orangutans.

After my last post about releasing Kath and Jutak into wild I thought it would be appropriate to tell you more about our work in the Lamandau reserve. Seeing orangutans being released back to the wild is incredibly rewarding and one of the most satisfifying parts of the job but it also comes with a huge responsibility. We have to make sure that we can provide long-term protection to the forests, and this is where the challenge really begins!

New guard post in Lamandau built by participants from our volunteer programme

The Lamandau Ecosystem Conservation Partnership (LECP) is an exciting new partnership for the Orangutan Foundation. It has been funded by the EC to maintain functioning tropical forest ecosystems in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, which support sustainable rural development. The Partnership comprises the local Ministry of Forestry for Central Kalimantan, Yayorin and the Orangutan Foundation.

Our focus is the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. It is important not only because it is an area of high biodiversity and a release site for orangutans but also because of its economic importance for local people. Local communities have the right to the sustainable use of non timber products.

Rattan - non timber product

We believe that in order to provide real protection for Lamandau we must work with local communities. We and our partners are working to achieve the following:

-Improving the protection of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve from illegal activities.

-Improving the education and awareness of communities around the reserve on the importance of conserving forests.

-Facilitating efforts to increase the economy of communities around the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve in a sustainable manner.

-Reforestation of Lamandau Wildlife Reserve to improve its capacity as a conservation area.

Last week LECP participated in the Development Exhibition that was held by Regional Government Kotawaringin Barat, Central Kalimantan. This exhibition was held in order to celebrate the 48th anniversary of Kotawaringin Barat. LECP with dozens of organizations and institutions had exhibition stands.

Regent Kotawaringin Barat being shown our stand

Regent Kotawaringin Barat, Mr Ujang Iskandar, officially opened the exhibition. He stopped by at the LECP stand and observed some of LECP activities that were displayed on the walls of the stand. Regent KoBar was very pleased with what has been done by LECP, especially when we gave him the picture of his house, which was taken from a helicopter while we were doing an air survey!

Children taking part in our environmental quiz

During the exhibition, we organised a quiz and played some movies with an environmental theme. We had 100's of visitors participating but the children were the really excited ones because we gave away prizes if they answered the quiz questions correctly.

We hoped, by taking part in this exhibition, the LECP project will be known by Kotawaringin Barat community. By learning about us they will hopefully like the work that we are doing, and afterwards support all of our activities!!

We really appreciate that Wildlifedirect has given us this opportunity to raise awareness about the orangutan, its rainforest habitat and our about work. Thank you Faye B and Sheryl B for supporting our work with your generous donations. We are making a difference with your help!!

Setting Orangutans Free

It is about time you read a story about orangutans, so here is a great one. Last Sunday, we released two teenage female orangutans back to a life in the wild. Kath and Jutak came to us as orphans. Both were confiscated from people who were holding them illegally as pets. Kath’s story is particularly tragic. She was confiscated from an animal dealer, in West Kalimantan (the neighbouring province) way back in 1998. She was chained around the neck, where the skin was rubbed raw. She cowered from her “owner” who became very aggressive during the confiscation. Eventually, the Police were called to tell him to back off.

During her time at the Orangutan Care and Quarantine, Kath’s weight increased over three-fold. On Sunday she weighed a healthy 25kg. Unfortunately, Kath was plagued by a persistent cough which prevented her from being released any earlier. The nightmare disease with captive primates is tuberculosis but repeated tests for TB came back negative. However, the cough would not respond to any medication whether homeopathic or western. It is only in the last couple of months her cough has subsided. And as soon as that happened, we thought “time to go!”

Kath and Jutak in the pick-up

After a final health check by the vets, the two orangutans were carried over to the travel cages, which were then loaded on to the back of the Forestry Department’s pick-up. (I laughed when I saw a little orangutan in one of the neighbouring enclosures standing on tip-toes trying to see what was going on). At this point, Kath and Jutak were OK, but their adrenaline must have been starting to flow. After the twenty minute drive to the jetty they looked decidedly nervous. When we tried to move their cages into the waiting speedboats, it became all too much. The orangutans tried to grab onto whatever they could to stop themselves from being lifted. Their fingers were gently prised open and the cages lowered into the boats.

As quickly as possible the boats took off and the two orangutans seemed to settle down, watching the river bank drift past. Kath even drank some water and ate an orange, which a truly scared orangutan would never do. A Brahminy kite circled overhead and twice hornbills flew across the river in front of us. Once we turned off the main Lamandau River into the Rasau River, a smaller, black-water tributary, the boats had to slow down, and the orangutans became positively curious. No doubt they were smelling the forest.

Once at Camp Rasak, far upstream, their cages were lifted onto a well barrow and trundled into the surrounding forest. Each Camp has a feeding site, which is also where orangutans are released so they know straight away where they can find food. The aim of rehabilitation is to return orangutans back to a life in the wild. The food they are given each day is only a supplement. It does not meet their full dietary requirement, so the orangutans still have to forage, but it does gives them some stability has they adapt to life in the forest.

Release site feeding platform

In the OCCQ, the orangutans sleep inside at night. In Lamandau, they have to make a new nest each day. At the OCCQ, the older orangutans are only taken to the nursery forest every second day – so we can separate males and females to stop unwanted pregnancies (we are happy if they breed in the forest, but we don’t want any more babies in cages). In Lamandau, the orangutans will be climbing and moving all day, every day. It takes the orangutans some time in their new surroundings to find the food trees, and to work out where the previously released orangutans’ home ranges are. For all these reasons the feeding sites are useful on top of which they allow our field assistants to monitor daily who is around, whether they are in a good physical condition.

In the wild again!!!

On Sunday, at the feeding site, Kath and Jutak climbed out as soon as their cage door swung open. But their excitement was not yet over. Straight away they were faced by Janu, a rather rambunctious teenage male. His thoughts were not on the mangoes laid out on the feeding platform, but on the two nubile females just arrived. He tried to inspect Kath who challenged him and slipped out of his grasp. There is no way a female orangutan can physically resist a sub-adult, let alone a fully adult male, but Kath had a plan. As she ducked out of the way, she exposed Jutak who Janu grabbed and held down with ease.

Curious Janu

I actually felt very sorry for Jutak. After having been loaded into a travel cage, driven in a car, put in a speedboat, and finally wheeled on a wheelbarrow, both her and Kath must have been, at the very least, bewildered. To be then grabbed and held down by a male of whose size she had never encountered, must have been the final straw. Jutak whimpered as Janu held her. The Assistants closed in to make sure he did not bite her, but nothing aggressive happened. Janu poked prodded and sniffed but then let her go. Jutak dashed up a tree and climbed hurriedly away. Kath, by this time had moved some off some 30m and was watching from high up in a tree.

We left them at sunset as both orangutans made their first nests in their new home. Two assistants will follow the orangutans for a week, recording how far they travel, what they eat and where they sleep. This way we can make sure they are settling in OK.

Despite the adventures of the day, it looked as if both will do just fine. We’ll keep you updated on their progress.

Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine (OCCQ) to successful rehabilitation.

I want to introduce you to the OCCQ because behind the need to save the forests, is the need to save the orphaned orangutans who ultimately all come from the forests which have been lost. Increasing numbers of orangutans are arriving at the OCCQ as their habitat is destroyed. The OCCQ currently has over 300 orangutans and we urgently need to release the older orangutans back to the wild, where they belong. To date 155 orangutans have been released in the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, most of who have come from the OCCQ.

Very young orphan orangutan with carer

Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine facility

Inside the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, we operate five release-camps each with a staff of up to seven field assistants. OF plans to build two more release camps at Lamandau to relieve pressure at the OCCQ. One of the camps will be constructed by participants from our invaluable Volunteer Programme and we are currently trying to raise funds for the construction of the other site and both release camps’ running costs.

The release of orangutans into the Lamandau creates a visible reason to increase the protection of threatened forests. Last August we managed to stop the establishment of an 8,000 ha oil-palm plantation that would have wiped out the reserve's buffer zone and impacted heavily on the nearby Lamandau River.

Saving Orangutans

It has just started to rain, which means it is bucketing down. The noise is deafening and Ully, our book keeper, has just pulled a face because she left her laundry outside when she came to work. Welcome to the rainy season in Borneo.

My name is Stephen Brend and I am the Orangutan Foundation’s Senior Conservationist here in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. I have never been much of a story writer so I am going to give away the punch-line straight off. We are here to save orangutans and to do that we need to save their habitat. In our blogs, you’ll read stories of individual orangutans and whole populations, but wherever the orangutans are and wherever we work the underlying context is always the same: to protect the rainforest.

Tanjung Puting National Park

Pressure on Indonesia’s forests comes in many forms: the rampant spread of oil-palm plantations, commercial logging, illegal logging, small scale agriculture and fire. Our work aims to tackle the threats directly, as when we evict illegal loggers from a National Park, and indirectly through education and rural livelihood programmes. We work both in protected areas and outside of them – perhaps as many as 60% of Indonesia’s remaining Bornean orangutans are in logging concessions. We have had successes and set backs. Illegal logging in Tanjung Puting National Park has almost been totally eradicated, but last year we had to fight widespread forest fires, the worst the country had seen in a decade. Increased awareness of global climate change has focussed the world’s attention on tropical forests, but has also increased demand for bio fuels, which in this part of the world translates as palm oil. Having managed to stop illegal logging in Tanjung Puting we now face plans to reduce the size of the Park to allow more plantations to be established.

Oil palm plantations within the Park’s borders

Also, behind the need to save the forests, is the need to save the orphaned orangutans who ultimately all come from the forests which have been lost. The number of orangutans in rehabilitation centres across Indonesia is a symptom of the rate of deforestation.

From total dependence on a human carer to having fun in the trees, where they belong!

I hope through our blogs you will come to understand how we work, how we pick and implement our projects and, perhaps most importantly, come to know our Indonesian team. My job here involves spending a lot of time in the field, often up to my waist in swamp water, but I consider those the good days! The truth is it is my colleagues who do the real work. It is their incredible effort and commitment which makes the long term survival of the orangutan a real possibility and should give us all reason for hope rather than despair. It certainly does me.

So here’s a brief outline of the Orangutan Foundation’s main programmes and areas of work:

Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP) covers 416,000 hectares and is one of the world's largest areas of peat swamp and heath forest. It has over 4,000 wild orangutans – one of the largest remaining populations. The Park is critical for the conservation of orangutans.

Guard post in TPNP

In Tanjung Puting, OF supports guard posts to prevent illegal activities and help emphasise that the park is being constantly monitored. Also, in the Park we manage the Camp Leakey Information Centre and Pondok Ambung Tropical Forest Research Station, which form part of our commitment to encouraging scientific research and developing ecotourism.

Lamandau Wildlife Reserve covers an area of about 76,000 hectares was created out of two former logging concessions. It was designated as a conservation area by the Indonesian Government in 1998. Lamandau is the release site for orangutans that have been rehabilitated at the Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine (OCCQ) facility. Lamandau is protected by a network of guard posts and patrols, and around the reserve we have community outreach programmes.

Stephen guiding a rehabilitated orangutan back to the wild – release site Lamandau Wildlife Reserve

The Belantikan Conservation Programme (BCP). The Belantikan region is home to the largest orangutan population outside of a protected area. Unfortunately, the area is almost totally given over to active logging concessions. This programme is designed to help conserve the region though engagement of the local people, district Government and the loggers. BCP is a partnership between Yayorin (local NGO) and OF. The BCP team have established a strong presence in the region, and have developed good relationships with the local Government and logging companies.

Belantikan - upland forest

BCP is vital by itself, but its importance is increased by the fact that the Belantikan region is representative of upland forest areas in Kalimantan, and is categorised as both "critical orangutan habitat" and "High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF)". If we can establish a model for habitat conservation here, the implications are hugely encouraging. However, Belantikan may soon be threatened by mining following the award of licences for iron-ore 'exploration' (possibly a legal euphemism for what will turn out to be extraction).