Endangered Bornean orangutans survive in managed forest, decline near oil palm plantations

JULY 17, 2019

by Public Library of Science

Recent surveys of the population of endangered Bornean orangutans in Sabah, the Malaysian state in the north-east of Borneo, show mixed results. Populations have remained stable within well-managed forests, where there is little hunting, but declined in landscapes comprising extensive oil palm plantations, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Donna Simon of the World Wide Fund for Nature—Malaysia, and colleagues. The study is the largest and most complete population survey of orangutans on Borneo, home to this endangered and endemic species.

Lowland forest is the most important habitat for orangutans in Sabah. Over the past 50 years, however, extensive logging and land clearance for agriculture caused habitat loss and fragmentation, which led to a drastic decline in their numbers, but the full extent of the effects on orangutan population have been difficult to estimate.

In the current study, the authors conducted aerial transects totaling nearly 5,500 kilometers across Sabah state, almost three times the length of a previous survey done in 2002-2003. Based on the number of nests, they calculated a population of 9,558 orangutans, including a previously unknown population of about 1,770 orangutans in many widely dispersed sub-populations.

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Orangutans make complex economic decisions about tool use

Date:  February 14, 2019

Source:  University of Vienna

Flexible tool use is closely associated to higher mental processes such as the ability to plan actions. Now a group of cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists from the University of Vienna, the University of St Andrews and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna that included Isabelle Laumer and Josep Call, has studied tool related decision-making in a non-human primate species -- the orangutan. They found that the apes carefully weighed their options: eat an immediately available food reward or wait and use a tool to obtain a better reward instead? To do so the apes considered the details such as differences in quality between the two food rewards and the functionality of the available tools in order to obtain a high quality food reward, even when multidimensional task components had to be assessed simultaneously.

Read on

Climate change: 'Future proofing' forests to protect orangutans

By Helen Briggs BBC News

7 February 2019

A study has identified key tree species that are resilient to climate change and support critically endangered apes.

Planting them could help future proof rainforests, which are a key habitat for orangutans, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN.

Researchers surveyed 250 plants in Indonesia's Kutai National Park.

Over 1,000 orangutans are thought to inhabit the park, as well as other rare animals such as the Malayan sun bear.

"Selecting which species to plant is a significant contribution to restoring the health of this ecosystem," said study co-author Douglas Sheil.

"Of course, the reasons why forest cover was lost in the first place must also be addressed for reforestation efforts to succeed."

Kutai National Park is located on the east coast of Borneo Island, in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia.

The forest faces threats from logging, fires and mining, and was once considered a conservation wasteland.

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Orangutans are exceptionally good at keeping their infants alive

30 October 2018

By Michael Marshall

Orangutans have staggeringly low rates of infant mortality. They are better at keeping their offspring alive than people in most human societies throughout history.

“We see this incredibly high survival that’s higher than any [non-human] mammal that we know of so far,” says Maria van Noordwijk at the University of Zürich in Switzerland.

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Orangutans saved as Malaysia foils high-seas smuggling bid

September 24, 2018

Orangutans and baby crocodiles were among 400 animals seized by customs officials from a boat off Malaysia

A pair of young orangutans, baby crocodiles and rare birds were among over 400 animals rescued from a boat off Malaysia as they were being smuggled from neighbouring Indonesia, officials said Monday.

Three suspected Indonesian traffickers were arrested after customs officials thwarted the bid to transport the animals to Thailand in an operation Friday off the Malaysian holiday island Langkawi.

The unusual cargo included two "frightened-looking" orangutans and dozens of baby saltwater crocodiles, Malaysian wildlife official Mohamad Zaki Rahim told AFP.

There were also about 350 sugar gliders—a type of small marsupial—cockatoos, parrots and parakeets found in boxes on board, he said, adding the smugglers intended to sell all the animals as pets.

The smugglers were seeking to transport the animals under cover of darkness in a cargo vessel from the vast, jungle-clad Indonesian island of Sumatra, through the Malacca Strait to Thailand, customs chief T. Subromaniam told the Star newspaper.

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Meet the orangutans: a guide to three species and how they're in danger

Orangutans are beautiful animals, but there isn’t just one type of orangutan, there are three species – and the continued deforestation of their rainforest habitats in Indonesia has put them all in peril

Fri 17 Aug 2018 16.42 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 15.26 BST

Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

Wild Bornean orangutans can live to about 45 and are the world’s largest tree-dwelling mammals, weighing around 87kg and standing some 1.3 metres tall. Their armspans can reach 2.1 metres, but their limbs are used for more than just physical power: they also perform clever feats of hunting, such as skewering fish with sticks.

Read on

How similar are humans and orangutans?

From umbrella-making to learning how to self-medicate, we share plenty of skills with our fellow great apes

Fri 17 Aug 2018 17.31 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 Aug 2018 15.25 BST

When scientists talk about animals using tools, they’re not normally talking about the implements you might use to knock up some shelves. But while animals generally confine themselves to bashing things with the odd rock, in extraordinary footage broadcast last year as part of the BBC’s Spy in the Wild series, a wild female orangutan is seen using a saw she has found outside a hut to cut through a log – even pausing to blow away sawdust before continuing.

This human-like use of tools shouldn’t be that surprising to us. Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutans are three of the eight living great ape species, alongside humans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Humans and orangutans share 97% of their DNA, with their last common ancestor having lived an estimated 12-16m years ago. Only gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees have more DNA in common with humans.

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Wildfires may cause long-term health problems for endangered orangutans

May 15, 2018, Rutgers University

Orangutans, already critically endangered due to habitat loss from logging and large-scale farming, may face another threat in the form of smoke from natural and human-caused fires, a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study finds.

The study appears in the journal Scientific Reports.

In 2015, Wendy Erb, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers, was studying male orangutans in the forests of Indonesian Borneo when fires started. She and her colleagues at the Tuanan Orangutan Research Station continued working until they had to stop and help fight the blazes, which occur annually, often due to smallholder farmers and plantations clearing forests to plant crops.

A few weeks into the fire season, Erb noticed a difference in the sound of the males' "long call," which scientists believe is used to attract females and warn other males. "I thought they sounded raggedy, a little like humans who smoke a lot," she said.

Erb decided to find out if the smoke the orangutans inhaled during the fires had affected their health. Humans who inhale smoke suffer ill effects, but she knew of no studies on the possible effects on orangutans.

Erb studied four "flanged" males, who weigh about 200 pounds and have large cheek pads. She awoke each day before dawn to collect their urine in a bag at the end of a stick she held below them. Analyzing their behavior and urine, the scientists discovered the big males traveled less, rested more and consumed more calories. They also produced more ketone bodies, molecules made by the liver from fatty acids during periods of low food intake, which was unexpected because the apes were eating more, not less. Why were they burning fat?

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'100,000 orangutans' killed in 16 years

By Victoria Gill

Science correspondent, BBC News

16 February 2018

More than 100,000 Critically Endangered orangutans have been killed in Borneo since 1999, research has revealed.

Scientists who carried out a 16-year survey on the island described the figure as "mind-boggling".

Deforestation, driven by logging, oil palm, mining and paper mills, continues to be the main culprit.

But the research, published in the journal Current Biology, also revealed that animals were "disappearing" from areas that remained forested.

This implied large numbers of orangutans were simply being slaughtered, said lead researcher Maria Voigt of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

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UK charity helps rescue two orangutans in Borneo from illegal sale

Two baby apes were discovered in tiny cages in Ketapang, Borneo. A man has been arrested for trafficking wildlife via social media

Tuesday 22 August 2017 15.05 BSTFirst published on Tuesday 22 August 2017 15.02 BSTA UK charity has helped rescue two baby orangutans who were found by police in West Borneo caged and ready to be sold through social media to illegal buyers.

The two apes, a one-year-old male and an eight-month-old female, who were discovered in tiny cages are now in the care of International Animal Rescue (IAR) at its centre in Ketapang, Borneo.

A man was arrested for the trafficking of wildlife both directly and by using online social media sites.A spokeswoman for the charity based in Uckfield, East Sussex, said: “The general condition of the two orangutans is fair, although both are dehydrated and suffering from severe distress. One of them is rocking back and forth – this is an abnormal behaviour presented by animals in extremely stressful conditions.”

David Muhammad, head of the law enforcement agency of the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said the orangutans were captured by a hunter in Sintang, Indonesia, and collected by the arrested man who was selling them for about IDR 3m (about £175).

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Borneo's orangutans in 'alarming' decline: study

July 7, 2017

The orangutan population on the island of Borneo has shrunk by a quarter in the last decade, researchers said Friday, urging a rethink of strategies to protect the critically-endangered great ape.

The first-ever analysis of long-term orangutan population trends revealed a worrying decline, they said.

An international team of researchers used a combination of helicopter and ground surveys, interviews with local communities, and modelling techniques to draw a picture of change over the past ten years.

Previous counts have largely relied on estimations based on ground and aerial surveys of orangutan nests. Some suggested that Bornean orangutan numbers were in fact increasing.

The new findings, the team said in a statement, are "a wake-up call for the orangutan conservation community and the Indonesian and Malaysian governments who have committed to saving the species."

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What’s in a name? Tracing the origins of orangutan scientific names

Date: August 2, 2016

Source: Taylor & Francis

A team of scientists have undertaken detective work to trace the origin of the first orangutan specimen to be scientifically named Pongo pygmaeus. By tracing the history of the specimen as accurately as they can, the team have established Banjarmasin, in the Indonesian part of Borneo, as the most likely place of origin. Their findings are published in the Journal of Natural History.

Genetic evidence has suggested that there are two species of orangutan, the Bornean Pongo pygmaeus, and the Sumatran Pongo abelii, and corroborates evidence from skulls and teeth that there are at least three Bornean orangutan subspecies.

Unfortunately, the scientific names currently used for these subspecies are suspect, as are their presently defined geographic distributions and, given 18th century colonial rivalries, it was not even certain that the name Pongo pygmaeus belongs to the Bornean species.

Three Australian and British researchers therefore set out to try to establish the origins of the specimens on which the contending orangutan scientific names are based. The investigation was not straightforward, as the original specimen dates from the 18th century, when records were sporadic, and pirates proved to be a deterrent to early 19th century exploration of north Borneo.

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Indonesia's forest fires threaten a third of world's wild orangutans

Fires have spread beyond plantations deep into primary forests and national parks, the last strongholds of the endangered apes

John Vidal

Monday 26 October 2015 13.05 GMT

Raging Indonesian forest fires have advanced into dense forest on Borneo and now threaten one third of the world’s remaining wild orangutans, say conservationists.

Satellite photography shows that around 100,000 fires have burned in Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands since July. But instead of being mostly confined to farmland and plantations, as they are in most years, several thousand fires have now penetrated deep into primary forests and national parks, thestrongholds of the remaining wild apes and other endangered animals.

Alarmingly, 358 fire “hotspots” have been detected inside the Sabangau Forest in Borneo which has the world’s largest population of nearly 7,000 wild orangutans. Elsewhere, fires are raging in the Tanjung Puting national park, home to 6,000 wild apes, the Katingan forest with 3,000 and the Mawas reserve where there are an estimated 3,500 .

“I dread to think what it will mean for orangutans. For them and other species, like the secretive clouded leopard and the iconic hornbill, the situation is dire and deteriorating by the day,” said Mark Harrison, director of the UK-based research and conservation organisation Orangutan tropical peatland project (OuTrop), which has been studying the tropical peat swamp forest of Sabangau since 1999.

“In their undisturbed, flooded state, peatland forests are naturally fire-resistant. But decades of poor peatland management practices, including extensive forest clearance and canal construction, has drained the peat, putting the whole region at high fire risk when the inevitable droughts occur,” Harrison said.

Prof Susan Page, a geographer at the University of Leicester and an expert on peatland conservation, said: “Dry peat ignites very easily and can burn for days or weeks, even smouldering underground and re-emerging away from the initial source. This makes them incredibly difficult to extinguish. Smouldering fires produce high levels of harmful gases and particulates.”

Little is known about the precise effects of smoke inhalation on animals but the lungs of animals are similar to those of humans, so it is expected to make them sick and unable to feed.

Readmore ..

Endangered orangutans face a new threat

Study says some habitats may not offer enough high-energy food

Date:October 14, 2015

Source:Rutgers University

The loss of habitats is the greatest threat to the endangered orangutans, and now a new study says their existence could be further jeopardized if conservation efforts don't include reintroducing these great apes into natural environments with enough high-energy food for them to survive.

In the study, published on October 14 in PLOS ONE, Rutgers researchers found that the density of Bornean orangutans is almost two times greater in an Indonesian peat-swamp forest -- just 39 miles from similar surroundings where orangutans must survive on thousands of calories less each day for most of the year.

"This study gives us a better understanding of how living in an unpredictable environment can influence the population density of large animals that spend the majority of their time in tress," said Erin Vogel, an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University. "If animals can't obtain enough energy, reproductive output and population sizes will suffer."

Read on ...

Dirty tricks of former timber crook’s palm oil firm threatens prime orangutan habitat

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Paul Newman

An area of Indonesian rainforest three times the size of Manhattan and home to endangered species such as orangutans and clouded leopards is under threat from a palm oil company run by one of the country’s most notorious former illegal logging kingpins. 

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesian partner Jaringan Pemantau Independen Kehutanan Kalimantan Tengah (JPIK Kalteng) have lodged a formal complaint with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) against PT Sawit Sumbermas Sarana (PT SSS) and its subsidiary PT Sawit Mandiri Lestari (PT SML). 

PT SSS was founded by Abdul Rasyid, whose track record of forest crimes in Central Kalimantan stretches back to the late 1990s; in 2000, he was named by the Indonesian Government as one of the top 18 illegal logging bosses in the country. 

In a December 2013 warning to potential investors in a US$90 million initial public offering for PT SSS, EIA revealed an independent evaluation of the firm’s prospectus showed illegal clearance of forest areas and direct threats to orangutan habitat posed by planned expansion of the firm’s oil palm plantations. 

The RSPO complaint addresses failings in the New Planting Procedure of PT SSS subsidiary PT SML which will lead to violations of the RSPO Standard. PT SML claims rights to an oil palm concession located in Kabupaten Lamandau, Central Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. 

EIA Forest Campaigner Tomasz Johnson said: “This is unfortunately yet another case of a palm oil company riding roughshod over regulations and the rights of indigenous people in the area concerned and resorting to a variety of dirty tricks to do it.” 

Read on ...

New hope for Borneo's orangutans despite threats of future climate change, deforestation

Date:

January 5, 2015

Source:

Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB)

Summary:

A new study has attempted to identify new hope for Borneo's orangutans. 'Despite some pessimistic outcomes, we remain positive about the fate of the orangutan. Our work demonstrates that continued efforts to halt deforestation could mediate some orangutan habitat loss, and this is particularly important in the southern parts of Borneo.'

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HSBC loans drive deforestation and push orangutans and endangered species to the brink

November 2013: Bank account holders with HSBC have been hit with the relevations that the bank has bankrolled unlawful clearing of rainforest, putting orangutans and other endangered wildlife at risk.

Research conducted by the Environmental Investigation Agency has found that Bumitama Agri Ltd, a company the bank has provided significant loans and other financial services to, forged ahead with rainforest clearance even though it didn’t have the required HCV (High Conservation Value) assessment.

“HSBC’s 60 million customers around the world would be surprised and appalled to learn that such a high-profile and trusted brand is profiting from large-scale deforestation even as it projects a wholesome public image of sustainability,” said EIA Forests Campaigner Jago Wadley. 

The bank relies on Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification system, to ensure companies they invest in are environmentally and sustainably sound but this is not good enough says the EIA.

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Who Knew? Orangutans Plan Trips

The night before Sumatran male orangutans travel through the forest, they often emit long, loud calls in the direction they plan to go, new research shows. This call, the study suggests, provides a cue to other members of the community to plan for the trip ahead, and is the first field-observed case of primates planning for future events this far in advance. 

Animals' ability to plan remains poorly understood, and has only ever been observed in a limited number of great apes and jay species within experimental or captive environments. For example, in one experimental setup, chimpanzees and orangutans were found to be more likely to choose a certain tool that would grant them a reward an hour later, and a zoo chimpanzee was once observed to gather stockpiles of stones and pieces of concrete to throw at visitors later on in a given day.

Still, this behavior is not well-documented in the field. To provide a more concrete assessment of animal planning capabilities in natural environments, researchers from the University of Zurich followed 15 different adult Sumatran orangutan males in the wild for up to 10 days each, specifically taking note of how male calls throughout a day correlated with their travels later that day and the following day. 

Read further

New Evidence That Orangutans and Gorillas Can Match Images Based On Biological Categories

Sep. 10, 2013 — The ability to form a general concept that connects what we know about the members of a category allows humans to respond appropriately when they encounter a novel member of that category. At an early age, children form categories to, for example, differentiate animals from inanimate objects and to differentiate dogs from cats. New research shows that other apes may form similar categories to represent different types of animals.

There are at least two ways to visually identify an animal as being similar to any other: the animals may be within a species and therefore closely resemble each other (so called 'perceptual' differences) or the animals may be considered to meet the criteria for a broader mental concept (for example, "reptiles do not have fur, they have short legs or have no legs, and lay eggs -- these all seem like reptiles"). Concept formation in human children has been subjected to extensive experimental study, with much focus on the interplay between concept acquisition and language acquisition. It has been proposed that these broader concepts depend upon formal scientific training and/or the ability to form verbal labels for such concepts. If non-human animals represent such concepts, this finding would be evidence against such a view. It is surprising then that the existence of natural categories, such as classification of animals, has not been extensively studied in language-less non-human apes. Studies of concepts in animals have instead paid close attention to the perceptual features that are used by the animals to extract information about category membership but have not typically allowed animals to demonstrate that they can also form concepts at different levels of breadth simultaneously.

In this study, a young female gorilla and four orangutans of various ages were shown images of animals and asked to match them to an image from the same species or family (i.e. one with a perceptual similarity). In an alternate experiment, they were presented with images of animals belonging to different taxonomic classes (insects, reptiles, fish, birds, and mammals) and were asked to match these images to sample images of other members of that class.

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Ape Aptitude: Chimps & Orangutans May Recall Older Memories

Just like humans, chimpanzees and orangutans can apparently remember things that happened years ago in their lives, scientists now find.

People's memories of days long gone by can often surface unexpectedly in response to sensory cues, such as scents. For instance, in a renowned scene in Marcel Proust's most famous novel, commonly known as "Remembrance of Things Past," the flavor of a certain cake known as a madeleine spontaneously evoked a long-forgotten childhood memory for the main character regarding breakfast at his aunt's house.

The ability to remember events from the remote past "has been considered a defining feature of human nature," said comparative psychologist Gema Martin-Ordas, of Aarhus University in Denmark. Now she and her colleagues find that chimpanzees and orangutans can also recall distant memories.

- See more at: 

http://www.livescience.com/38279-chimps-orangutans-remember-older-memories.html#sthash.NtFVtXzH.dpuf