Secret Population of Orangutans Found

A population of 200 of the world's rarest orangutans was found tucked away in the forests of the island of Borneo, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

All subspecies of Bornean orangutans are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But scientists estimate just 3,000 to 4,500 individuals are left in the subspecies known as Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus, making them the most severely threatened.

Two-thousand of those live in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in Batang Ai National Park and Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary, researchers say. The previously unknown population was found by conservationists near the Batang park, in an area covering about 54 square miles (140 square kilometers).

Local communities apparently had been aware of the apes, but no major research projects had been undertaken in the area until February, when conservations with WCS and other groups surveyed the region. They found a total of 995 orangutan nests, including fresh nests that indicated the rare population was recently using the area.

Previously, researchers studying fresh nests left by wild orangutans in Indonesia found they are incredibly complex, made in the crooks of large branches. The orangutans bend and interweave living branches about an inch (3 centimeters) wide to form the nest.

"They are just bent. They can actually stay living and later on you can go back to them and see they are like an archeological artifact of all these strangely bent items," said Roland Ennos of the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, when the study was published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's very similar to weaving a basket, they have to break the branches, weave them together and form a nice, strong, rigid structure."

The Sarawak state government is now mulling new protections (including new national parks) for the area where the hidden orangutans were documented.

http://news.yahoo.com/secret-population-orangutans-found-121844744.html

Borneo will probably lose 50% of its orang-utans

According to new research led by a Liverpool John Moores University conservation scientist, one of our closest cousins, the Bornean orang-utan, is facing extinction.

November 2012. Sharing 97% of human DNA, orang-utans are close to humans in evolutionary terms but scientist Professor Serge Wich and others have found that only 22% of the already endangered species are actually living in protected areas.

Logging, oil palm plantation and tree plantation land
The research also shows that the rest of the orang-utans are inhabiting areas used for logging (29%), oil palm plantations (19%), industrial tree plantations (6%) or are in land that is not allocated for any specific use (24%).

Recent studies show that orang-utans could possibly survive in well-managed logging areas so a very optimistic outcome would be that half of the current population could continue to exist. Unfortunately, it is more likely that far less than half of the population will survive as not all protected areas and logging areas will continue to be well-managed. Improving such management is therefore a high priority.

Commenting about the research, Professor Wich said: "This research paints a bleak future for the Bornean orang-utan. To avoid this potential decline, plantation development in orang-utan habitats must be halted because it infringes national laws on orang-utan protection.

Further growth of the oil palm plantation sector should be achieved through increasing the productivity of trees in existing plantations and expansion of new plantations into areas that have already been deforested.

Island-wide land-use masterplan
"To reach this goal a large scale, island-wide land-use masterplan is needed that clarifies which possible land uses and management systems are compatible with orang-utan conservation. Such a plan should make much better use of values of ecosystem services of forests such as water provision, flood control, carbon sequestration, and sources of livelihood for rural communities.

"Presently land use planning is more driven by vested interests and direct and immediate economic gains, rather than by approaches that take into consideration social equity and environmental sustainability."

The research appears in the scientific journal 'PLOS ONE'.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/orangutan-borneo012.html