A population of
200 of the world's rarest orangutans was found tucked away in the forests
of the island of Borneo
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
"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.
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