150,000 Orangutans Lost in the Jungles of Borneo

Orangutan, the most lovable ape species is in danger. As hunting and killing of Orangutan’s in Borneo has led to the dramatic decline of its population by nearly 150,000 from the island’s forests in last 16 years.

The steepest percentage losses occurred in regions where the forest has been cut down for the cultivation of palm oil and acacia plantations and more animals were killed by hunters who ventured into the forest or by farm workers when the apes encroached on agricultural land, according to the study that published in the journal Cell Biology. This will contribute to the long-term decline of a fragile species.

The comprehensive study brought from data collected by 38 different research organizations. When Maria Voigt, the study's lead co-author and a researcher from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology and the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, calculated the numbers, she was shocked to found nearly 150,000 Borneo orangutans were lost between 1999 and 2015 roughly half of the population.

To reach this conclusion, Voigt and her co-author Serge Wich from the Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K. first had to estimate where and how densely packed orangutan populations were in Borneo. They did this by compiling field surveys that tracked orangutan nests. They found 36,555 had been observed over a 16-year period.

During their ground and helicopter surveys, the researchers recorded the locations and numbers of nests that orangutans built on the trees from branches and leaves. The nests have long been used to infer the sizes of orangutan populations because the animals themselves are so elusive.

Now the researchers estimate that the number of orangutans left in Borneo may stand between 70,000 and 100,000, which means the population remains is less than the population lost between 1999 to 2015.

By modeling future habitat loss largely driven by expansion of palm oil and paper plantations and other agricultural activities—Voigt and Wich estimated 45,000 orangutans could be lost in the next 35 years apart from the killing of the animal by hunters and farmers.

Serge Wich, a co-author on the report at Liverpool John Moores University sharing his first reaction on the findings, says, “I expected to see a fairly steep decline, but I did not anticipate it would be this large, When we did the analyses, we ran them again and again to figure out if we had made a mistake somewhere. You think the numbers can’t be that high, but unfortunately they are.”

During the research, the conservationists identified 64 separate groups of orangutans on the island, out of this group only 38 groups has more than 100 orangutans in their group, rest of the groups has less than 100 orangutans in number, which is alarming.

The forests of Borneo are being fragmented by new plantations and building projects and the associated loss of trees, which also contributed to the falls in local orangutan populations of up to 75% the study found, but in the dense forest the population of the orangutan fell by 50% which is shocking.

Around nine percent of the orangutans were lost in regions where land was completely cleared. But a large majority disappeared from forested regions, surprising the scientists.

In their field studies, the team also found no evidence of lethal diseases, like Ebola, that kill great apes in Africa. They then looked at findings from a large interview study that reported orangutan kills across Borneo, as well as local anecdotes.

Part of the risk is the fact that orangutans reproduce at slow rates. They typically have only one baby every six or seven years.

Hunters in Borneo tend to enter the forest to find pigs and deer, but if they encounter a large orangutan, they can take the animals for food. The target are mostly the female orangutans, who are killed for their young ones, which are later sold to be kept as pets. Far more of the apes die when they venture on to plantations, and into people’s gardens, where they are shot or killed with machetes. Few weeks back, the authorities in Borneo found the body of a male orangutan bearing machete scars and wounds from 130 air gun pellets.

The bleak assessment of the state of the Bornean apes comes from an international team of conservationists who compiled one of the most comprehensive reports yet on the animals, which in 2016 were declared, “Critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

World Wildlife Fund’s Emma Keller says, “Orangutans are disappearing at an alarming rate. Their forests homes have been lost and degraded, and hunting threatens the existence of this magnificent great ape. In order to reform, immediate action is to be taken. Consumers can make a difference through only supporting brands and retailers that buy sustainable palm oil.”

Now the need is to work with the local people and make them understand the importance of this decline in the population of orangutans and convince them that the apes are not dangerous and it is illegal to kill them. If Indonesia and Malaysian governments take up the lead to raise awareness about orangutans through social media to reach out to people.

According to Wich, “the decline in the population of orangutans has been largely due to hunting, but if we can turn this practice around, these orangutans could over a long period can bounce back. If we can stop the hunting and killing, we can reverse the trend.” This is a hope, but if implemented with zeal can work wonder saving the animal and at the same time save the earth.