Posted on 03 January
2011
By Trishna Gurung, WWF-US
Baim has precious little in common with
his Indonesian celebrity namesake. He is
tiny—less than two feet stretched end to
end—and weighs scarcely more than the cardboard
box that he clutches at with desperation.
His face has traces of dried baby formula
and his wrinkled frame is surrounded by
a nimbus of soft rust red hair. His eyes
hold the gaze of the humans peering down
at him while he keens, terrified to find
himself separated from his mother.
“Orangutan mothers never
willingly give up their babies, so in most
cases we must assume the worst—that the
mother was killed by poachers in order to
get the infant,” says Jimmy, WWF-Indonesia’s
communications coordinator in West Kalimantan.
“While I’m happy that
this orangutan was rescued, it is a real
tragedy to lose even a single member of
this subspecies from the wild because their
numbers are already dangerously low.”
Baim belongs to the
most threatened subspecies of Bornean orangutans.
Experts estimate less than 4,500 Pongo pygmaeus
pygmaeus are left in the fast disappearing
forests of West Kalimantan (Indonesia) and
Sarawak (Malaysia). Disappearing forest
homes and a rabid demand for baby orangutans
to supply the illegal wildlife pet trade
are taking their toll.
The baby Bornean orangutan
is the second to be rescued by villagers
in the remote hamlet of Lanjak in just a
month. Forest ranger Andy Tarsita has already
named the orangutan Baim when he shares
the news at WWF’s project office in Lanjak.
“I think Baim is lucky
because if we hadn’t found him then he would
have been sold as a pet or abandoned, but
at least now he has a chance of being released
back into the wild,” says Tarsita.
“Of course, the luckiest
future for this little fellow would’ve been
to live in peace with his mother in the
forests.”
If Baim is truly lucky
his journey will end where it began, back
in the forests at the Heart of Borneo. But
the way back home begins with the decision
of district officials at Lanjak to entrust
Baim’s care to WWF until he can be handed
over to the correct authorities in faraway
Pontianak.
Ahead lay a five-hour
drive over rough roads and a noisy airplane
ride into the provincial capital of West
Kalimantan. There, among much fanfare, he
will be given to the care of BKSDA (Natural
Resources Conservation Office), and put
in an already overcrowded orangutan rehabilitation
center where he will live for a few months,
a few years, or the rest of his life if
he is not released back into the wild.
The lush, fertile alluvial
plains and lowland valleys of Borneo are
home not only to Bornean orangutans and
other wildlife but to humans as well.
The past few decades
have seen an influx of migrants coupled
with aggressive and ambitious economic development
plans. A map of the last forests on the
world’s third largest island are overlaid
with a grid of interlocking concessions
that the government has already parceled
out to be cleared and replaced with vast
plantations for oil palm and acacia.
Between 1980 and 2000,
it is estimated that more timber was harvested
from Borneo than was exported from the Amazon
and Congo basins combined. As more of Borneo
falls to the axe, orangutans are getting
squeezed into ever shrinking forests.
Jimmy had come to Lanjak
to meet community leaders from the Dayak
tribes to assess forest restoration programs
and the community-led monitoring of wild
orangutans. Several villages in the forest
corridor connecting Danau Sentarum and Betung
Kerihun national parks are involved.
“The sad truth is that
Baim is not the first or the last orangutan
rescued as new roads open up the forests
to illegal logging and poachers whose only
concern is turning a profit,” says Jimmy.
“We need to step up
our anti-poaching work and redouble outreach
to local people to show them that conservation
pays through alternative income schemes
and eco-tourism.”
In 2007, the governments
of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei signed
an historic agreement to save the Heart
of Borneo. WWF is working with these nations
to conserve 220,000 km2 of rainforest, almost
a third of the island, through a network
of protected areas and sustainably-managed
forests.
At the UN climate change
conference in Bali that same year, Indonesian
President Yudhoyono outlined a national
strategy to protect orangutans, stating
that by 2015 all orangutans still in rehabilitation
centers would be returned to the wild.
“The good news is that
it is possible to reintroduce rescued orangutans
into the wild and we’ve seen it happen with
success in some areas,” says Dr. Barney
Long, WWF’s Asian species expert.
“Unfortunately, in the
bigger picture, rescue and rehabilitation
doesn’t address the double threat facing
wild orangutans—severely reduced habitat
and the persistent demand for the illegal
pet trade.”
Logging, land-clearing
and conversion to oil palm plantations are
the biggest threats for the remaining rainforests
in Borneo and the species that inhabit them.
The Heart of Borneo is a refuge to orangutans,
elephants and rhinos, and lesser-known species
such as the sunda clouded leopard, sun bear,
banteng (wild ox) and endemic Muller Bornean
gibbon, as well as indigenous Dayak people.
“Good intentions require
committed action if they are to make a difference,”
says Long.
“If orangutans go the
way of the Javan and Bali tiger, then Asia
will lose its great apes, and humans will
have put a full stop to the existence of
one our closest relatives.”
For
now, Baim resides at Ketapang Orangutan
Centre of International Animal Rescue-Indonesia.
He will grow to adulthood here and like
the others, wait for a future that leads
back home into the lush Heart of Borneo.
