October 26, 2006 - Each year in November, an increasing number of concerned people take a week to celebrate one of humankind’s closest living primate relatives: the orangutan. These intelligent and acrobatic, ginger-haired great apes are favorites of zoo visitors, but their future in their native forests of Borneo and Sumatra has become a worry to researchers and conservationists who have seen their numbers decline to alarmingly low levels in recent years. Pekan Peduli Orangutan or Orangutan Caring Week is a week long celebration of orangutans and one important way to get people, particularly in Indonesia, to appreciate the many fascinating characteristics of the species, understand their current plight, and develop a caring attitude such that the orangutan will be seen as a national treasure worth saving.

 

A Fascinating Species. The name, orangutan, comes from the Malay and Indonesian language, and means “person” (orang) of the “forest” (hutan). When you look into the face of an orangutan, you can see something eerily familiar- something definitely humanlike. Indeed, this visible sign of similarity to ourselves is borne out in the genetic data. We share some 97% of our genes with orangutans. Only the African great apes, the gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees, are closer to us genetically. Yet orangutans are also unique in being the most arboreal (tree-dwelling) great ape, the least social of all the primates (with the exception of the mother-offspring relationship) and do not live in stable groupings like the other great apes.  Orangutans are generally solitary animals, particularly the adult males. Their diet is mainly fruit, though they do supplement it with young leaves, flowers, bark, and occasional insect protein.As is the case with the other great apes, conversion of natural habitats to human use- mainly to large scale agriculture- is the orangutan’s main threat, but other activities are contributing to their critically endangered status as well: illegal logging, fires, and the pernicious illegal pet trade.

The Brutal and Inhumane Trade. It is the illegal pet trade that shows the face of tragedy so clearly. Normally, wild adult female orangutans devote up to 7 years raising their single offspring before having another.  During this period, she shows her offspring how to travel safely through the rainforest canopy, how to identify edible foods including specific plant parts, how to open and process encased foods, how to build sleeping nests, and so on. Learning how to predict the location of ripened fruits within their expansive home range, in addition to the aforementioned survival skills, are probably some of the reasons the orangutan possesses such a large brain. No other mammal, besides human females, invests as much time in raising a child.  The illegal pet trade brutally severs that bond between an orangutan mother and her child. Poachers shoot and kill the adult female to obtain her dependent infant which, if alive, can fetch hundreds to thousands of dollars on the black market, depending on the number of dealers and effort needed to bring the infant to market. Because the trade in orangutan pets is completely illegal under international and Indonesian law, young orangutans that are confiscated from human homes or private zoos are brought to rehabilitation centers in terrible condition- physically and/or psychologically. Many are diseased, malnourished, or injured as well as suffer from separation anxiety and depression.  Success in rehabilitating such youngsters depends upon a number of factors, including their level of pre-existing forest skills, age at time of capture and length of time in captivity, their physical and psychological condition, their ability to form a bond with a human or orangutan surrogate mother, and their personality and intellect. Some orangutans are more adaptable than others in learning how to survive in the rainforest, but many succumb no matter how much effort is given by human caregivers.Besides being brutal and inhumane, the illegal trade, which frequently accompanies habitat conversion, has a devastating affect on the population of the species. Conservationists have reason to be concerned about habitat destruction and the illegal pet trade as the population of orangutans has dwindled to fewer than 7,000 on Sumatra and 50,000 on Borneo.

For every orangutan that survives its ordeal to the illegal pet market in Jakarta or Surabaya, six to eight orangutans die in the process.  Let’s do the math: to obtain an infant orangutan, every mother is killed-no mother gives up her child willingly; not all infants survive the fall; not all young orangutans are given proper food and fluids, many are stressed causing an impaired immune system leading to disease, and many suffocate or are injured during transport.  During the course of her reproductive life, a female orangutan may give birth to only 3 or 4 surviving offspring.  Even the loss of a single adult female orangutan within a population can have a profound affect on the stability of the population. Small populations can easily collapse; and as more and more habitat is reduced, such collapses have been increasingly documented on Sumatra and Borneo. Unless something is done to address this issue, orangutans may be gone from most of their range in Sumatra in 5-10 years and on Borneo in 10-20 years.

Consistent Education is the Key. Orangutan Caring Week is a time each year when concerned people can talk to other people about the orangutan and its current dilemma. It also gives orangutan and conservation organizations opportunities to discuss their programs with the media and at schools and other institutions.  The Orang Utan Republik Education Initiative (OUREI) initiated Orangutan Caring Week in 2005, a decade after its co-founder, Dr. Gary Shapiro, originally founded and promoted Orangutan Awareness Week to become an international event.  Shapiro said, “Ten years is long enough to merely be aware of the issues. We now must evolve beyond passive awareness and into an active caring mode. We have to care enough about the species to save it while there still is time.”  One of the main concepts OUREI hopes can be conveyed to the public is that the orangutan can serve as an ambassador to the diverse tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia.  While this species is itself deserving of protection and a long-term future, people should come to understand that by protecting orangutans and their rainforest habitat, they are also protecting the other plants and animals that share that forest ecosystem. Put another way, healthy forest ecosystems have healthy populations of mammals, birds and high biodiversity; and healthy forest ecosystems provide clean water, clean air and stable substrates that resist erosion.  With proper attention to methods and yields, resources can be harvested for human use such that the forest continuously sustains both the animal populations and future generations.  Bottom line: if we protect orangutans, we protect forests, and we protect ourselves.Another main concept is that we need to encourage the Indonesian government to enforce existing laws that protect the orangutan from the illegal pet trade and to replace the trade by encouraging people to purchase life-like orangutan dolls or puppets. The public can help by signing an online petition at: http://www.petitionthem.com/default.asp?sect=detail&pet=2386that will be delivered to officials in the Indonesian government though the OUREI Ambassador, Angelina Sondakh.Forest fires are raging again this year in Borneo and Sumatra caused by carelessness and greed. Palm oil and other estate plantation managers use fire to cheaply clear brush and the remains of cleared forests before planting crop trees. The illegal practice also provides nutrient rich ash, but the fires send a shroud of choking smoke as far as Singapore and also spread to nearby forests where they threaten and kill innocent animals. How do we put this annual international problem to an end? Who needs to be educated? Who needs to care?  The answers are not easy to find, but we can encourage a dialog on this topic during Orangutan Caring Week.

Other orangutan organizations are also participating in Orangutan Caring Week. The theme of Orangutan Caring Week 2006 is “Celebrating a Right to a Life of Freedom in the Diverse Forest Ecosystem.” In Indonesia, orangutan organizations in Jakarta and Medan will be holding exhibitions, contests, and other events where people will increasingly come to learn about the orangutan, its current plight and the hope that the orangutan will have the freedom to be wild for future generations.

 

---

Note: On November 16, 2005, Orangutan Caring Week was first officially declared by the Minister of Forestry, M. S. Kaban in Indonesia, following efforts made by the Orang Utan Republik Education Initiative (OUREI) to promote official recognition. Such a declaration indicated the Indonesian government’s support of celebrating a species which serves as the Ambassador of the Indonesian rainforest. Following the declaration, numerous Indonesian citizens wanted to take action, and in December 2005, the Orangutan Caring Club of Indonesia (CPOI) was formed under the direction of OUREI and OUREI Ambassador Angelina Sondakh. Excelso Café, the largest Indonesian owned coffee café chain, showed its commitment to orangutan survival by partnering with OUREI and CPOI to distribute education and outreach information about orangutans to the Indonesian people.