Orangutan call: Break the impotence
Published on: Saturday, November 03, 2012
By: Kan Yaw Chong
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Everybody was impatient at the lack of progress on the reconnection of fragmented forests, especially in Lower Kinabatangan - Sabah's premier river nature and ecotourism destination.
One primatologist and conservationist after another had pleaded for the need to glue back the fractures which kept the 1,100 orangutans (2002 figures) physically and genetically isolated.
In fact, Dr John Payne, former Director of WWF-Malaysia Office Sabah advocated wildlife sanctuary status for Lower Kinabatangan way back in the 1980s when it was a robust 68,000-hectre connected primeval wetland forest.
But the State Government Sabah waited and waited until it had gone down to just 28,000 hectares in and around 2002, after the media pressed for public commitment.
Again, French primatologist Marc Ancrenaz had pressed for reconnection of fragmented forests for as long as I had known him since the late 1990s.
A complex web of problems needing big money, plantations but also villagers held back the obvious need for solutions.
So, little or no reconnection had taken place, for a prime riverine tourism destination which draws hordes of ecotourists who are attracted to the awe and charisma of the wild Orangutan, especially an incredible hulk like the mighty flanged male represents.
So, will this be another wait for nothing.
Years of inaction
But what happened during those years of inaction?
An apparent observed decline by about 25pc, the victims being the Orangutan and Marc actually said Proboscis monkey had gone down, too.
About 300 Orangutans had gone missing from the pockets of fragmented forests, leaving the standing current head counts in Lower Kinabatangan at around 800 or so.
No one is precisely definite about their fate or whereabouts.
UK based Nature Alert took the chance to accuse the oil palm industry in Sabah for 'slaughtering' them and went as far as accusing Orangutan NGOs in the UK for 'sleeping' with their killers.
However, Lower Kinabatangan-based French geneticist, Dr Benoit Goossen, said: "It's impossible.
We would know it, the Department of Wildlife will know it, if people in the oil palm plantations have slaughtered 300 orangutans."
Goossen cited forest fragmentation of Orangutan habitats as the most plausible culprit.
"I think it's a natural process due to fragmentation, due to the fact that the Orangutans have to disperse to breed. So they venture into the plantations and go somewhere else," he said.
300 missing Orangutan found in plantations?
"We believe the 300 Orangutans which are not found in the Lower Kinabatangan forest fragments any more may have ventured into the plantations," Dr Goossen said.
"When Marc (Ancrenaz) did his first population survey in 2002, he didn't look at the plantation but when he did the survey again in 2007, the survey showed some Orangutans in the plantations.
Those could be (missing) orangutans found in the fragments in 2002 and they are moving, living transients passing the plantations, sometimes because they have no choice," Dr Goossen said.
"The reality is this is something we have predicted," he asserted.
"Following our 2002 population and habitat viability analysis, we predicted that the Orangutans in small fragments in Lower Kinabatangan would go extinct if we do not reconnect the forests in between.
This is kind of a natural process. Some of the fragments are overcrowded with Orangutans , so they try to move out and they are moving out to plantations, using the plantations to disperse," Goossen added, citing Hutan (Marc's research centre) interviews with a lot of plantation workers who affirmed seeing Orangutans in plantations.
"This means the Orangutans are using plantations for dispersal, it doesn't mean they can survive in plantations."
Stable and unstable populations
Marc reiterated the reconnection imperative.
"Some places are so isolated that if we don't work hard to reconnect them, the 1,100 (including the 300 supposed transients in plantations?) will not be there forever, they will lose out over time because of food competition and breeding (inbreeding?).
So, what are the major reconnections to be done?
"To me, secure and capture the following populations: Tabin Wildlife Reserve; Kulamba and the ones in Lower Kinabatangan," he said.
These are what he called "unstable" populations.
"We know they are not viable (in the long run)," he said.
In contrast, there are populations assumed to be "stable" and Marc cited Deramakot.
'Riparian crisis: Lower KinabatanganÉ one-third gone; Segama: Almost everything'
"Where the fragmentation had gone right into the river bank, the Orangutans can't even move along the river banks any more," Marc said.
Asked how much of the forest fragmentation in Lower Kinabatangan involve riparian reserves, Marc cited "one third" or about 30 percent.
"But in Lower Segama, almost everything!" he noted.
So, there is habitual violation of Land Ordinance Sabah (Cap 68) Section 26 (1) & (2) and the Sabah Water Resources Enactment 1998 Sections 41 & 42 but more about this later.
Feeling of crisis
There is a feeling of crisis and at the same time, impotence, as they moaned about the recurring spectre of extinction (doom?) over the whole question of reconnection.
As if that is not enough, it seems the primatologists worried sick over a looming conversion prospect that will worsen the forest disconnection.
This time, it involves about 25,000 hectres of privately owned (howbeit Native Title lands) but still forested lands in the Lower Kinabatangan.
Should sneaky planters able to manipulate native land owners to convert them into oil palms, it will be all hell break loose.
Dr Marc said some of these private titled lands involve riverine forests which tourists still see them as attractive natural river bank vegetation but what if land owners decide to cut them down.
Once destroyed, it will degrade booth visually and functional tourism value of the Lower Kinabatangan.
65pc of Sabahs orangutans live in unprotected forests!
Even though the Orangutan is the mascot of Sabah's RM5billion tourism industry, 65pc of the Great Ape's 11,000 population live in unprotected forests!
The situation is no better in river nature tourism heartland Kinabatangan.
Dr Isabelle Lucman points it out.
"All over Kinabatangan, there are unprotected forests, privately owned land or in the process of being alienated," she said.
Isabelle said the estimated 25,000 hectares of privately owned but forested land is "big and critical."
'If these lands are acquired for conversion to oil palms, then the work that we do to reconnect corridors will be made even harder," Dr Isabelle said.
Standing western help to reconnect beautiful and productive Sabah
Dr Goossen agreed.
"If the oil palm industry gets these lands (25,000ha), that will increase the fragmentation," he said.
To save the day, he proposed a Government moratorium on oil palm in Lower Kinabatangan and a Government buy back of the said 25,000 hectares.
"We don't say oil palm plantations to give land back (except encroached riparian reserves), we want to stop conversion and we want to manage the landscape properly, including oil palm plantations."
Here you are - State Government, a standing offer to help keep a prime nature tourism area intact in one piece, beautiful, functional, productive and teeming with wildlife down the future or is Sabah bent on thinking of only the interest of a few destructive local planters.
Why not grab the offer and do everything make reconnection happen but first and foremost, act immediately to prevent another impending disconnection of 25,000 hectres of forests!
Afterall, all the five star resorts in Sabah recruit the best from the West into their top management hierarchy to develop and keep them in tip-top quality.
Why not use these resident western talents to get aspired job done.
Top guns in Sabah Tourism advocate buyouts
Interestingly, I noticed the interested presence of the two Sabah tourism top guns - Datuk Irene Charuruks, General Manager of Sabah Tourism Board (STB) and STB Chairman, Tengku Datuk Dr Zainal Adlin, who both voiced support the immediate first step of a staging an outright State buy out of the 25,000ha forested but privately owned land.
"I think we should get that 25,000 hectares identified to ensure that all Orangutans in Lower Kinabatangan can meet. I think we should get the Action Plan to get that done first," Datuk Irene proposed.
But where is the money going to come from?
Tengku Adlin pointed to the annual RM1 billion CPO cess collected by State Government, implicitly making the oil palm industry contribute to a critical conservation project.
"Without the connectivity, we are going to have a big problem to make Orangutan conservation happen.
So, I think we should really focus on a total buy-out and make it happen," Tengku sounded at the workshop session.
Growing impatience for results
Dato' Dr Dionysius Sharma, WWF-Malaysia CEO, agreed this is a key priority - getting the 25,000 hectares secured, safeguarded and developed into another conservation area.
But mood is against repeating an old issue, every body called for action.
"The imperative of reconnecting fragmented forests through wildlife corridors is nothing new, it had gone on for years," said James Robins, primatologist with Orangutan Appeal UK.
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