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Poaching and logging reduce Oran-utan population by half
Orang-utans on the brink
Mar 8th 2001
From The Economist print edition
ALTHOUGH the world is home to tens of millions of animal species, the vast majority are small crawling things with lots of legs. When they are threatened, it is difficult for conservationists to stir up much public sympathy. Not so for the big, cute and cuddly animals known as "charismatic megafauna". People will go to enormous lengths to protect them, their habitats and the other less attractive (but no less important) animals that live with them.
The red, furry orang-utan, found mainly in Indonesia, is undeniably one of the most charismatic of such megafauna. But this seems to be helping it less than you might suppose. According to the Zoological Society of London, the number of orang-utans has halved over the last decade to just 25,000. The main threat to Asia's only great ape is illegal logging, which destroys the orang-utans� habitats.
The root of the problem lies in Indonesia's political turmoil, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an environmental group that has been scrutinising illegal logging in Indonesia for the past two years. The resulting power vacuum has allowed illegal timber extraction�an activity which already outstrips legal production�to move large commercial operations into supposedly protected parks such as Tanjung Puting National Park in central Kalimantan. There are only seven areas where orang-utans have populations of more than 1,000 individuals. Five of these, including three parks, are now being commercially logged.
Logging, both legal and illegal, used to be centrally controlled under the corrupt and nepotistic Suharto regime but is now in the hands of powerful regional timber barons who encourage local lawlessness. The EIA says that unless these people are prosecuted the future for the orang-utan looks bleak. According to a study by Carel van Schaik of the Wildlife Conservation Society, just published in the journal Oryx, the orang-utan faces extinction in the wild within ten years.
The main attraction of national parks such as Tanjung Puting for illegal loggers is a valuable decorative hardwood called ramin. The logging gangs working the forest are paid $1-2 per cubic metre to extract it. But when processed and carved into mouldings, ramin can fetch $1,000 per cubic metre. It is then exported to Europe (mainly Italy), America, Japan and China. As most legally obtainable ramin has already been felled, the only source is now inside protected areas.
The EIA has been investigating and exposing environmental crimes for the last 15 years, in areas such as trade in endangered species, the supply of illegal chemicals and illegal logging. Its main tool is to expose the leading figures perpetrating environmental crimes. But in Indonesia the EIA has a problem. The leading figures behind the logging are already well known, as are the illegal sawmills. The secretary-general of the forestry department has published the names of 18 regional timber barons who run Indonesia's logging operations. So far, three of them have been arrested, one in the last month.
But Julian Newman, a senior investigator for the EIA, told a meeting of the Zoological Society this week that he is not optimistic about the outlook for the Tanjung Puting park. The man the EIA is accusing of being the region's timber baron is a wealthy politician called Abdul Rasyid. EIA investigators and a local group called Telepak, posing as timber buyers, have compiled and published information on Mr Rasyid's company, Tanjung Lingga. The attention of both Indonesia's president, Abdurrahman Wahid, and agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF has been drawn to the plight of the park. But no action has been taken.
If the EIA's claims are correct, that is a pity, but not surprising. Indonesia is riven with political and economic problems, and its legal system is dysfunctional. As a result, the fate of the orang-utan, officially declared an endangered species last October, has an ominously low priority.
Source: The Economist
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