This document provides information on orangutans and the threats they face from the expansion of oil palm plantations. It discusses how orangutan populations and habitat have declined dramatically on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra due to forest loss. Conservation efforts aim to protect remaining habitat, improve management of protected areas, encourage sustainable plantation practices, educate workers, and rehabilitate orphaned orangutans. However, with high global demand for palm oil and rapid forest conversion, orangutans remain gravely endangered.

1. Vol. 2 No. 4 Winter 2008
The Price of
Protection
The Endangered
Species Act Turns 35
Is There Value in TWS Certification?
Medical Mystery at Red Rim
Managing Gray Wolves

2. Winter 2008
Vol. 2 No. 4
6 Editor’s Note
8 Letters to the Editor
10 Leadership Letter
12 Science in Short
14 State of Wildlife
19 Today’s Wildlife Professional: Katherine Kendall
feaTure STory
22 The Price of Protection 22
By Divya Abhat Credit: Julie Maher/ WCS
roTaTing feaTureS
30 Human-Wildlife Connection
Managing a Charismatic Carnivore
By Katherine Unger
34 Commentary
The Danger of Wolves
By Valerius Geist
36 Human-Wildlife Connection
Orangutans Barely Hanging On
By Amy Clanin
36
42 Professional Development Credit: Hardi Baktiantoro/Centre for Orangutan Protection
Is There Value in TWS Certification?
Articles by Thomas Decker, Alan Crossley,
and Michael Hutchins
47 Health and Disease
Medical Mystery at Red Rim
By Lisa Moore LaRoe
53 Plans and Practices
Sweat Equity at East Bay
By David Riensche
57 Tools and Technology
A Tool for Envisioning Conservation
By Rob Riordan
53
63 Reviews Credit: David Riensche
Western Eyes on China’s Wildlife
By Jiang Zhigang
More Online!
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65 The Society Page members at wildlife.org. Throughout the
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68 Gotcha! are available online.
Photos submitted by readers
© The Wildlife Society www.wildlife.org 5

3. Orangutans Barely Hanging On
CAn they survive the spreAd of oil-pAlm plAntAtions?
By Amy Clanin
D
eep in the heart of Borneo and Sumatra lie 2008). Erik Meijaard, senior ecologist with The Na-
the last remaining forest habitats of the elu- ture Conservancy (TNC) in Indonesia, says the total
sive orangutan, Earth’s largest tree-dwelling number could possibly be as low as 50,000. “We
animal and the only great ape living outside of know that they are dying on a daily basis,” he says.
Africa. On the islands of Sumatra (in Indonesia) The leading cause of the decline for both spe-
and Borneo (which straddles Malaysia, Indonesia, cies is the destruction of their tropical rain forest
and Brunei), the orangutan—a Malay word meaning habitat for logging and conversion to crops,
Courtesy of Amy Clanin “person of the forest”—is a symbol of pride. The pri- particularly oil-palm plantations. According to
Amy Clanin is Pro- mate’s forest home, however, is disappearing fast. a report by the United Nations Environment
gram Manager for Programme (UNEP), “98 percent of the forest
the Bonobo Conser-
vation Initiative.
Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) are now criti- [in Indonesia] may be destroyed by 2022” (UNEP
cally endangered and Bornean orangutans (Pongo 2007). Protected areas are not immune. “At cur-
pygmaeus) are endangered (2008 IUCN Red List). rent rates of intrusion into national parks,” the
In 2003 conservation organizations and researchers report states, “it is likely that many protected
combined ground surveys and satellite imagery to areas will already be severely degraded in three
compile comprehensive estimates of orangutan pop- to five years.” This dire situation spotlights the
ulations. That data and some recent updates suggest conflicting demands of wildlife conservation and
there are only about 6,500 orangutans remaining in human economic growth.
Sumatra and roughly 54,000 in Borneo (Wich et al.
Palm oil is much like other agricultural com-
modities such as coffee, cocoa, soybeans, and
sugarcane: As demand for a product rises, land is
cleared to make way for crops, destroying wildlife
habitat in the process (Clay 2004). Today the
global market is hungry for palm oil, used as an
alternative for trans-fats in many foods such as
chocolate and ice cream, and in cleaning agents
and cosmetics. Palm oil is also in high demand as
a biodiesel fuel, a cleaner alternative to carbon-
based petroleum. Ian Singleton, conservation
director for the Sumatran Orangutan Conserva-
tion Program (SOCP), says this new demand puts
Indonesia’s ecology at risk. “There’s a big drive to
promote palm oil as a biodiesel source,” he says,
“and that makes the country very, very vulner-
able to outside manipulation.”
Together, Indonesia and Malaysia are the top
producers of palm oil, providing 86 percent of
the global supply (Patzek and Patzek 2007). To
meet demand, growers have clear-cut or burned
Credit: helen Buckland/sumatran orangutan society
millions of hectares of orangutan forest habitat
orangutans, such as this male in sumatra, are among the to make way for lucrative oil-palm plantations,
world’s most endangered primates. living only in southeast
Asia on the islands of Borneo and sumatra, these great apes a process that releases enormous amounts of
are rapidly losing their forest habitat. carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (Fargione et
36 The Wildlife Professional, Winter 2008 © The Wildlife Society

4. al. 2008) and severely diminishes regional bio- pests, making the species vulnerable to hunting,
diversity (Fitzherbert 2008). These agricultural trapping, and poaching, all of which are illegal.
“factories” prove inhospitable for orangutans, Workers encountering orangutans often shoot the
forcing them to compete for fragmented patches animals, fearing attack (WWF-Indonesia, 2007),
of forest where their numbers are falling fast. To although orangutans are not known to attack
halt the slide toward extinction, conservation- unless provoked or threatened. When orangutan
ists, governments, oil-palm growers, buyers, mothers are killed, their orphans are often cap-
consumers, and other stakeholders are uniting to tured and illegally sold as pets.
develop strategies in an attempt to preserve the
apes’ habitat.
When Space Gets Tight
Orangutans, which primarily eat fruits, require
large home ranges, resulting in low population
densities. Although they will eat “famine foods”
such as leaves, bark, and insects, the majority of
their diet consists of widely dispersed sugary, ripe
fruits (Caldecott and Miles 2005). Anne Russon,
professor and scientific advisor for the Borneo
Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), cites esti-
mates that one square kilometer of forest habitat
in Sumatra can support up to six or seven female
orangutans; in Borneo the same area can sustain
only one to three individuals (Russon 2004). How-
ever, a female may require a personal home range
as large as five to six square kilometers to support Credit: Amy Clanin
her needs, and males require even larger ranges. in the relative safety of Borneo’s tanjung puting national park, a mother and infant travel
As large tracts of monoculture plantings, oil-palm through the type of forested habitat necessary for orangutan survival. though this park is
plantations fragment and often completely destroy one of the last and most important protected areas for orangutans, it is threatened by illegal
logging and oil-palm development.
the lowland dipterocarp, freshwater, and peat-
swamp forests that are prime orangutan habitats.
Without large, continuous stretches of forest for
foraging, orangutans are hard-pressed to find
ample sources of food.
Isolation caused by forest fragmentation can also
lead to inbreeding, as young orangutans are unable
to transfer out of their natal range in search of
mates. Reproductive biology further complicates
orangutan survival. These apes have the slowest
breeding rate of any primate in the world, includ-
ing humans, and although females have long life
spans, living up to 45 to 50 years in the wild, they
generally produce only about four offspring in their
lifetime (Russon 2004). The young, in turn, de-
pend on their mothers for nearly a decade, longer
than any other primate except humans.
Credit: stephen Brend/orangutan foundation
As they struggle with food scarcity in fragmented
oil-palm trees grow from denuded ground in the lestari ungur oil palm plantation in
forests, hungry orangutans will sometimes wander
Borneo. palm oil is in high demand as a source of biofuel and a substitute for trans-fats.
into oil-palm plantations to raid the crops. Plan- Clear-cutting and burning of forests for plantations, however, releases huge amounts of
tation workers view orangutans as agricultural carbon dioxide and drastically diminishes biodiversity.
© The Wildlife Society www.wildlife.org 37

5. Credit: World Wildlife fund
Borneo’s forests are suffering a stark and rapid decline, as shown in maps based on landsat imagery and annual forest loss data. in the late 1990s
indonesia lost an estimated 20,000 square kilometers of forest a year, primarily in Borneo and sumatra (unep 2007). that rate has accelerated largely
due to the spread of oil-palm plantations and illegal timber harvest. By some estimates, Borneo’s forests could be gone by 2012 to 2018.
Steps to Save Orangutans agement of existing protected areas and expanding
As awareness of the crisis grows, conservationists corridors for orangutans are critical measures to
and governments are working together to develop ensure the long-term sustainability of the species.
solutions to save both orangutans and local econo- In Sumatra, for example, the Leuser forests are
mies. Their efforts take many forms. the last stronghold for the Sumatran orangutan.
“This area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and
Protecting Habitat encompasses the Gunung Leuser National Park,
Seventy-five percent of orangutans live outside but even these forests are not safe from develop-
protected areas, primarily in timber concessions, ment,” says Helen Buckland, palm oil working
according to TNC’s Erik Meijaard. It is therefore group secretary for the Ape Alliance and UK
essential to improve forest management through coordinator with the Sumatran Orangutan Society
carefully controlled selective cutting or through (SOS). Orangutans are at risk of losing this crucial
land acquisition for conservation. In late Octo- habitat as thousands of hectares have already
ber 2008, for example, the LEAP Conservancy been illegally converted to oil-palm plantations.
of Malaysia entered talks with government of- To combat further loss of habitat in the park, SOS
ficials and private landowners to buy 222 acres has signed a Memorandum of Understanding
of tropical forest owned but not yet developed by with the local government in North Sumatra and
palm-oil producers in Malaysian Borneo. The land the Gunung Leuser National Park office to allow
would link two sections of a wildlife reserve that SOS to replant indigenous tree species in the
is home to roughly 600 orangutans. This effort area. To date, SOS and local communities have
marks the first time that nongovernment activists planted over a quarter of a million seedlings in
in Malaysian Borneo have worked with the govern- the park. Such community forestry projects can
ment in attempting to buy land for environmental serve as viable economic alternatives to jobs in
protection, according to Cynthia Ong, LEAP Con- illegal logging and forest conversion for agricul-
servancy’s executive director. ture. Communities living adjacent to the park are
benefiting by establishing their own tree nurser-
The 25 percent of orangutans that do live in so- ies and agro-forestry projects.
called protected areas such as parks and reserves
are also at risk because many of these areas are Similarly, Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park
poorly managed, says Meijaard. Improving man- in the past suffered from widespread illegal logging
38 The Wildlife Professional, Winter 2008 © The Wildlife Society

6. and is still under pressure from oil-palm develop-
ment. “Not all of it has been converted yet, but we
stand to lose about 15,000 hectares,” says Stephen
Brend, senior conservationist with the Orangutan
Foundation (OF). The group is now working with
local police, park management, and communities
to operate guard posts and patrols that monitor
and control illegal logging within park boundaries.
Sustainable Plantation Practices
In May 2007 World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-
Indonesia published a detailed report, produced
in collaboration with conservation and academic
institutions, on how palm-oil producers can
minimize human-orangutan conflict around
plantations. The report suggests that human-
orangutan conflict can be curtailed if oil-palm
plantations hire patrol units, install barriers to
keep orangutans out, and help fund programs to
relocate and rehabilitate nuisance or orphaned
orangutans. The report also advocates cautious
land-use planning, urging oil-palm companies
to establish plantations on fallow, non-forested
agricultural land in Borneo and Sumatra. Unfortu-
nately economics works against this: It takes five
Credit: helen Buckland/sumatran orangutan society
years after planting to produce an oil-palm crop,
so, to offset the wait, companies often opt orphaned orangutans stare from a cage at a Bornean
rehabilitation center. scores arrive at such centers each year,
for immediate profit by stripping forests and their mothers often killed by poachers. only a lucky few are
selling the timber before planting on the newly rescued; most orphans are sold in the illegal pet trade.
cleared ground. Growers that do adhere to envi-
ronmentally and socially responsible practices
can now seek certification based on sustainability
standards developed by an international multi-
stakeholder organization called the Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). “Palm-oil producers
are suddenly realizing that they have a role to play
in conserving key species such as the orangutan,”
says RSPO Vice President Darrel Webber, “and
that role is significant.”
Cautious land-use planning can have the added
benefit of reducing carbon emissions. Tropical
forests and peatlands, which are prime habitat for
orangutans, store enormous amounts of carbon.
When peatlands in particular are stripped, drained,
and dried for oil-palm plantations, the peat oxidizes,
releasing “something like 90 tons of carbon dioxide
per hectare per year,” says SOCP’s Ian Singleton.
A 2008 report in Science (Fargione et al. 2008)
Credit: hardi Baktiantoro/Centre for orangutan protection
notes that converting rainforests and peatlands for
drugged by a tranquilizer dart, a starving orangutan stumbles through a forest converted
crop-based biofuels actually creates a “carbon debt,” to an oil-palm plantation. After sedating the ape, rescue workers with Borneo orangutan
producing more greenhouse gases than the fossil survival released it into another forest. six months later this orangutan had to be
fuels that are replaced. Recognizing the multiple re-evacuated after its new forest home was also destroyed by palm-oil development.
© The Wildlife Society www.wildlife.org 39

7. problems associated with deforestation, Suma-
tra’s provincial governments and the Indonesian
government recently endorsed a declaration to
promote sustainable development and protect
critical ecosystems such as peat forests, thereby
preserving orangutan habitat and biodiversity.
Education to Reduce Conflict
Conservation organizations are reaching out to
palm-oil companies to mitigate human-orang-
utan conflict. SOS, for example, visits oil-palm
plantations in North Sumatra to conduct
local-language training sessions that include a
documentary produced in conjunction with the
Great Apes Film Initiative and Films4Conserva-
tion. The training encourages producers never
to kill orangutans, teaches about orangutan
behaviors, and offers advice on how to scare the
animals away and whom to call if an orangutan
needs to be relocated. “This mitigation train-
ing is new for us,” says an oil-palm plantation
worker named Daman from Karya Jadi village
in Sumatra. “Now we can try to help orangutans
leave our farmland by making noise using bam-
boo drums or carbide cannons.”
Translocation
Orangutans that are potentially in harm’s way
can often survive through translocation, which
involves finding an animal in a threatened
area, sedating it with a dart gun, and, if it is
sufficiently healthy, transporting it for release
in a safe wild reserve. OF’s Stephen Brend
says his group’s translocations have jumped
from 24 between 1999 and 2006 to 13 in 2007
alone. The sharp rise was due in part to fires
in 2006 that left orangutans isolated in forest
patches too small to sustain them. “Many had
taken to crop raiding,” says Brend, putting
them at risk of being shot.
Rehabilitation Centers
A handful of centers across Borneo and Suma-
tra provide food, shelter, and medical care for
injured or orphaned orangutans, and all are
running far beyond capacity. More are needed,
and each is extremely costly to run. The BOS
Foundation’s Nyaru Menteng Orangutan
Reintroduction Project in Borneo, Indonesia,
for example, is reportedly the largest primate
rescue operation in the world, having cared for
almost 1,000 orangutans since it was estab-
lished in 1999. “We’re always at capacity,” says
40 The Wildlife Professional, Winter 2008 © The Wildlife Society

8. Michelle Desilets, BOS’s UK director. Infant
orangutans, which need intensive long-term

attention, are particularly underserved. Stephen

Brend estimates that 50 to 60 orphans arrive
annually at the Orangutan Care Center and
Quarantine in Borneo. Though most rehabili-
tated animals are eventually reintroduced into
the wild, rehabilitation is far more resource
intensive than direct translocations, and it
risks habituating the rehabilitated orangutans
to humans. Rehabilitated animals sometimes 
remain around the release camps, says Brend,
while translocated orangutans tend to take off 
into the forest and are not seen again.

Tapping Orangutans’ ‘Star Power’
Ecotourists eager to see the great orange apes

in the wild contribute thousands of dollars each
year toward orangutan conservation. OF, for

example, has released 200 rescued orangutans
into Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park,

a move that has attracted tourists and in turn
raised global awareness of the orangutan’s plight.

Nature tourism in the park has helped create
revenue for area communities and generated em-

ployment for local people to study, protect, and
maintain the park. On a more mass-culture scale,
 
the Animal Planet television show “Orangutan 
Island” is also bringing attention to the threat to 
orangutans by featuring BOS-Indonesia’s Nyaru 
Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction Project.
Desilets says her organization is “working with 

filmmakers to get the message across” that
orangutans desperately need protection.
Orangutans serve as ambassadors for forest con-
servation around the world. Yet the president of


Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has said
that at the current rate of habitat destruction,
orangutans could go extinct by 2050. “It’s ab-
solutely unthinkable that we will lose them all,”

says Stephen Brend. “On the small scale, I think
we can be proud that we’re winning battles,” he
says, “but across the range of orangutan habitat,
we’re probably losing the war.”


learn more about orangutan conserva-
tion groups by viewing this article online
at www.wildlife.org.
© The Wildlife Society www.wildlife.org 41