Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

Since Autumn 2006, Born Free has been supporting ground-breaking research into human-orangutan conflict resolution in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Under the leadership of Gail Campbell-Smith, a PhD student at the Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology, seven Indonesian field assistants have been funded by Born Free to assist with the fieldwork.

With Indonesia’s tropical rainforest being continually depleted, and the remaining tracts of wild areas becoming ever-more fragmented from each other, orangutans are being forced to forage on farmland to supplement their fast-disappearing forest food sources. The result is direct conflict with humans, equally dependent on their crops to survive. Such competition invariably impacts negatively on both humans, in terms of economic losses from damaged crops, as well as orangutans, who are often trapped, poisoned or shot by understandably vengeful farmers.

The project aims to not only highlight and better understand the nature and extent of increasing competition between orangutans and humans for land and food, but also to explore and develop ways in which local communities can be encouraged to identify and implement solutions to the problem.

Research Findings February 2011

Born Free's support for the human-orangutan conflict project in Sumatra continues to produce valuable results. As well as assistance with crop protection for local communities, the study also produced important data to improve our understanding of the plight of this critically endangered 'man of the forest'.

In a new academic article released through the online journal PLoS ONE, findings are presented which re-affirm the damage being done by the large-scale conversion of natural habitat into palm oil plantations. The analysis shows that whilst orangutans can continue to survive in areas of degraded forest including some converted agricultural lands, extended areas of palm oil "offered few, if any, benefits".

These monocultures were found to be largely devoid of desirable food items and only traversable by the orangutans on foot, not through the canopy. These findings add more weight and detail to the growing body of evidence showing how devastating the conversion of natural habitat to this kind of plantation is for the wildlife of Indonesia and other countries in the region.

The full article is available online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017210