16th August, 2007
Kota Kinabalu: Back in the year 1900, the Borneo had about 180,000 orangutans roaming in the wild. Yet, last year, the Orangutan Population and Habitat Viability Analysis (PHVA) disclosed that there are only 41,000 of the primate left on our island.
Of the total, 11,000 of the population are found in Sabah, located on the northeastern tip of Borneo, of which 62 percent are believed to live outside protected areas, said Sabah Wildlife Department deputy director, Laurentius Ambu.
“About 6,800 individuals are believed to reside outside protected areas, while the remaining are found in Danum Valley (500), Tabin (1,400), Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary (1,125), Kulamba (500), Ulu Kalumpang Forest Reserve (150), Crocker Range National Park (180), Sepilok (200), Silabukan (60), Kinabalu National Park (50) and Maliau Basin (40),” he disclosed in his working paper entitled “Living in a Just World of Nature” at the Asia Pacific News Agency Organisation (OANA) workshop on Sustainable Forest Management.
“The present threats facing the orangutans are their habitat loss due to timber production, land conversion to agriculture and forests fires,” he said. He added that from 1975 to 1995, the coverage of primary forests in Sabah has decreased by 89 percent.
“It is forecast that all the primary ‘old growth’ forests will be worked out by the year 2010,” he said.
Laurentius also said that the prime habitat of the primate, the lowland forests, is not only easily accessed by humans, but is also suited for agriculture development. Their habitats were fragmented due to uncontrolled agriculture, plantations, and infrastructure developments.
“Today most orangutan populations survive in small fragmented habitat blocks. There are 400 blocks in Borneo and 16 blocks in Sumatra,” he added.
Poor logging activities have also resulted in the decrease of the orangutan population density Laurentius also cited two case studies in his talk – the first is on the impacts of the Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) practices at the Deramakot Forest Reserve (DFR) on the orangutan population as well as conservation efforts taken by the local community at the Lower Kinatabatangan.
On the SFM at DFR, the deputy director explained that its goal was to manage the production of the forests in a way that mimics natural processes for the production of low volume, high quality, and high priced timber products.
“Sustainability is defined in terms of balanced nutrient cycles, forest structure, biodiversity, forest function and socio-economic needs,” he said.
He added that DFR had adopted the Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) system, and conducted sulvicultural treatments and rehabilitation of degraded areas since 1989 and has met the requirements of the Malaysian Criteria and Indicators (MC&I) and the Forestry Stewardship Council’s (FSC) standards for Sustainable Forest Management in 1997.
Laurentius also told that the orangutan densities at DFR were high and is similar to those in non-exploited areas.
“We found that while conventional logging is known to decrease orangutan densities, in DFR, their densities are found to be high, similar to those in non-exploited forests,” he said.
A Wildlife Monitoring System developed by HUTAN and implemented at DFR since 1999 showed that the number of orangutans per kilometer at DFR were 1.40 in December 1999, while in June 2005, the average increased to 1.68.
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