A battle has broken out between conservationists over attempts to save the orangutan. The groups are divided over the issue of reintroducing to the wild orphaned animals that are now living in refuges in Borneo and Sumatra.
On one side, experts say such attempts can no longer be considered important and that all efforts must be directed to saving the apes’ last rainforest homes.
“If we cannot protect animals in the wild, there is no point in reintroducing rescued apes to rainforests,” said Ashley Leiman, of the Orangutan Foundation.
But this view is disputed by campaigners who say refuges are today bursting with almost 1,000 orangutans.
“It is a simple matter of welfare,” Cambridge biologist David Chivers said.
“We are keeping these animals in artificial environments, in enclosures. Their rehabilitation should not be sneered at,” Chivers said.
The issue will form the core of the Great Ape Debate to be held at the Linnean Society in London on Thursday when conservationists will argue over the growing controversy surrounding measures to save the orangutan.
At stake is the survival of one of humanity’s closest evolutionary cousins, a creature whose numbers are plummeting alarmingly. In Sumatra there are only 7,000 of the species, Pongo abelii, which is now “critically endangered,” while in Borneo, there are 40,000 members of the Pongo pygmaeus species. Its status is “endangered.”
All great apes — chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans — are suffering from dramatic declines in numbers. Chimps and gorillas are victims of several forms of human activity, including their hunting for bushmeat. However, the orang-utan is affected by a single threat: habitat loss.
Across Borneo and Sumatra, swaths of rainforest are being chopped down for wood and to provide land for farmers wishing to plant oil palm and acacia trees. More than 1 percent of the forest is destroyed every year.
For orangutans, the impact is devastating. Driven from their rainforests, adults are often shot by loggers or farmers when they stray into fields.
Young orangutans are often caught by villagers and taken to a refuge.
Conservationists estimate that there are at least 800 orangutans, most of them young, living in refuges in Borneo and Sumatra. Mary Tibbett, of the World Land Trust, said her group was committed to protecting orangutan communities and was attempting to buy up land around the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in Borneo to provide homes for them.
“Reintroductions sound fine but carry risks of bringing in diseases that orangutans have picked up from humans or letting loose animals who simply do not have the skills to look after themselves in the wild,” she said.
But Chivers said that, in the long term, keeping orphaned animals in refuges could harm wild populations.
“Keeping hundreds of animals in refuges separated from wild animals means you are isolating a large chunk of the orangutan gene pool. That is ultimately harmful to the species. We need to reintroduce these animals,” he said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS