Orangutan Conservancy

The “Conservation Drone Project” is one of the new and innovative technologies that the Orangutan Conservancy is helping to support. This short video, shot from the perspective of the drone, shows how effective this high-flying, low cost technology can be. Future use of the drone can be used for gathering accurate orangutan counts, keeping track of palm oil and deforestation situations and reporting fire forests.

You can read more about this project run by Dr. Serge Wich and Lian Pin Koh here.

A total of 11 orangutans aged from 8 to 24 years old were released into the wild at Batikap forest in Murung Raya district of Central Kalimantan on Saturday.

It was the second release by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, which was also joined by the provincial forestry agency and the local administration.

The foundation aims to return 49 orangutans to the jungle this year, foundation spokeswoman Meirini Sucahyo told BeritaSatu on Saturday.

“There are 25 orangutans left that will be released in the next months,” she said.

The Saturday release was performed by two teams. Beforehand they were tested for TB, hepatitis, HIV, herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases as a precaution. The first team transported Bang Jagur, Bunga, Kali, Mama Tata and Tata in the morning and the second team went with Ompong, Jojo, Heldi, Komeng, Yaya and Ika.

“They are all anesthetized first and transported on helicopters,” Meirini said, adding that 15 people were involved in the release.

Afterwards, the foundation tracks the animals two to three times a week in the jungle. The monitoring team will  observe for behavioral changes among the primates and see how they are adapting to their new environment.

Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia. (The Orangutan Conservancy’s reseach leads us to believe those numbers are under 40,000)

They are faced with the threat of extinction from poaching and the rapid destruction of their forest habitat, driven largely by palm oil and paper plantations.

Conservationists in the region have been raising awareness about the plight of the endangered orangutans for some time.

Article by Fidelis E. Satriastanti of The Jakarta Globe/ OC edit by Tom Mills

BANDA ACEH: The courts in Aceh have failed to protect a carbon-rich peat  forest and critically endangered orangutans from the actions of a palm oil  company which the central government acknowledges has acted illegally.

After five months of detailed argument, the three-judge court sitting in  Banda Aceh threw the case out on jurisdictional grounds, saying the complainants  from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) should first have sought  mediation with the company.

The lawyer for the complainants, Kamaruddin, said the judges had used the  wrong legislation – the environmental law, not administrative law – to make  their determination. He flagged an appeal.

The case began when Aceh’s then governor, Irwandi Yusuf, signed a permit in  August last year  to allow the  palm oil company PT Kallista Alam to set up new  plantation in the environmentally sensitive Tripa peat swamp seven hours south  of the province’s capital.

Detailed maps presented to the court showed the concession was part of the  Leuser Ecosystem, which is protected from development under Indonesia’s 2008  national planning law.

Large parts of the concession also consisted of peat swamp of more than three  metres in depth, making it a valuable store of carbon dioxide. The area also is  one of the last redoubts of the endangered Sumatran orangutan, whose population  in the area is estimated to now only number in the hundreds.

For all three reasons, permitting a plantation on the area and clearing it  was illegal, the complainants argued.

The Sumatra-based landscape protection specialist Graham Usher told the Herald the company had begun  clearing the swamp by burning, which is  also illegal. It has also dug two canals to drain it, he said.
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