Orangutan: The Red Wizards of the Treetops

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The Red Wizards of the Treetops

By Irfan Kortschak

“The baby orangutan lost all appetite for its food, and, after lingering for a week a most pitiable object, died, after being in my possession nearly three months. I much regretted the loss of my little pet … For several months, it had afforded me daily amusement by its curious ways and the inimitable ludicrous expression of its little countenance.” Alfred Wallace, ‘The Malay Archipelago,’ 1869

Alfred Wallace described the dramatic decline and eventual death of his beloved pet baby orangutan with obvious sorrow. In an earlier passage of his famous ‘The Malay Archipelago,’ he explained how he acquired his ‘little pet.’ In his fascination with the habits and behavior of the great red apes of Kalimantan, he shot and killed no less than seventeen specimens in order to examine the animal more closely. After shooting one mother, he managed to rescue its baby from where it had fallen face down in a bog to take it back to his camp. Separated prematurely from its parent, the baby struggled to survive on the clearly inappropriate diet of coconut milk and sugar. The animal languished and eventually died.

Unfortunately, the mixture displayed by Wallace of casual cruelty and mawkish sentimentality, of ignorance and fascination, reflects the general pattern of interaction between humanity and one of their nearest cousins, Pongo pygmaeus, “the red wizards of the treetops.”

Like the other apes, the orangutan is chunky and thickset, with long arms and short legs. Covered with long, coarse, matted red hair, the dominant male orangutan is significantly larger than his female companion, reaching a height of about 140 cm and a weight of 85 kg. By contrast, the female weighs less than half this figure, rarely exceeding 40 kg. Dominant males are also distinguished from the female by their hanging cheek flaps and baglike air-sack hanging from his throat, although not all male orangutans develop these secondary sexual characteristics. Although formerly found throughout the Southeast Asian region, the orangutan is now restricted to the swampy lowlands of Kalimantan and a few isolated pockets in Sumatra.

Unlike the African apes – the gorilla, the bonobo, and the chimpanzee – the Asian orangutan leads an almost entirely arboreal existence. The orangutan is uniquely suited to life in the trees. With long arms and four hands, they move swiftly and gracefully through the treetops, using all four limbs to walk along branches and swing from tree to tree, but slowly and awkwardly on the ground. In fact, the orangutan has little reason to descend to the earth. Each night, they build nests of leaves and branches where they sleep, often more than thirty meters above the ground. The wild figs and other fruit that form the bulk of the animals diet are also found in the treetops, while their drinking water comes from young leaves filled with moisture by the frequent rains. In fact, this ape usually descends to the ground only when forced by drought, fire or other disaster to find food outside their usual territory, although adult males may come down to travel between trees when the branches are unable to support their weight.

It is perhaps the relationship between the mother orangutan and its child that most emphasizes its similarity with humanity. Of all the creatures except humans, the baby orangutan has the longest period of dependence on its mother, nursing until they are six years old. Even after this period, females may stay with their mothers until they age of fifteen or later, during which time they observe their mother raising younger siblings, and thus acquire mothering and other skills themselves.

As Wallace testifies, baby orangutans are cute, cuddly, sweet creatures. Unfortunately, it is this very fact that threatens their existence, by creating a huge black market for babies as pets. Every year, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of baby orangutan are taken from the forest of for sale on this black market. Babies are usually captured by killing their mother. In fact, experts estimate that for every baby taken alive, at least five orangutans are killed. Often, the babies succumb to injuries when they fall a hundred meters to the ground after their mothers are shot. They are also often traumatized by the sight of their mother being killed and possibly eaten, often dying of shock as a result. They are also highly susceptible to human disease and are commonly held in appalling conditions following their capture. Finally, the ultimate irony is that these animals make very bad pets. When they grow from sweet babies to dangerous adults, owners are often unable to manage them.

Willie Smits, of the Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation, states that there is an unhealthy synergy between the illegal pet trade, the destruction of the orangutan’s native habitat due to increased economic activity, Asia’s economic crisis and the fires that raged through Kalimantan in 2000, all of which have exacerbated the plight of the orangutan. Smits estimates that the extent of orangutan habitat has decreased by more than 80% in the last twenty years due to the destruction of lowland forests as a result of non-sustainable forms of slash and burn agriculture and for commercial ventures such as timber logging, oil mining and rubber plantations. Even worse, the fires of 2000 drastically accelerated this destruction. The reduction in the extent of the orangutan habitat has put pressure on the animals and brought them into more frequent contact with humans, while the economic crisis has put increased pressure on people to seek extra income – often by capturing and selling orangutan babies. “The economic crisis makes people take risks they normally wouldn’t. They just don’t care. Whatever they can get, they will take it,” Smits says.

The Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation works with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and has been involved in the rescue and confiscations of dozens of baby orangutans both from all over Indonesia and from countries such as Taiwan and Japan.. Where possible, these are placed in the Wanariset Orangutan Reintroduction Project, the largest facility for rehabilitating orangutans in Borneo, for eventual reintroduction to the wild. Wanariset Station, located in the jungle 38 km from Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, implements its reintroduction program on the model developed by the well-known orangutan expert, Dr. Herman Rijksen. A sister station, the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Center, operates near Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.

Some experts believe that cutting orangutans off completely from humans is the only way that they can develop the necessary skills to live in the wild. Others reject this extreme view, stating that contact with humans must be reduced gradually, giving them time to develop these skills. At Wanariset, freed orangutans come into as little contact with humans as possible.

In fact, the degree of dependence is largely determined by the age at which the orangutan in question was captured. An infant captured before the age of two finds it extremely difficult to learn what he or she needs to know to live in the wild. As Willie Smits says, “Many of the babies have been through highly traumatic experiences and their role models for behavior have been humans.” He adds that orangutans captured at an early age often prefer the company of humans to that of their own species. “If they grow up with humans, they think they are human,” he says.

Willie Smits says that the key concept in the reintroduction program is ‘socialization and enrichment,’ with objects and activities used to enrich an animal’s environment to increase its activity levels and challenge its active mind. Through this process, freed animals “learn to become orangutans.” Before the re-education process begins, animals must first be quarantined and screened for diseases they may have picked up from humans. After completing their quarantine, young orangutans are placed in large socialization cages with other orangutan of roughly the same age. Of itself, this helps the animal relearn how to be an orangutan. By playing with members of the group, the newly introduced animal learns how to develop social bonds with members of its own species, and by imitating the others it learns to climb and swing, valuable skills that improve its muscle tone and coordination.

Later, individual orangutans are presented with several different kinds of enrichment exercises. In the wild, orangutans spend a majority of their time foraging for food, utilizing a range of different skills to do so. Thus, food-based enrichment exercises involve the presentation of food in ways that makes it difficult to locate and harder to process. For example, seeds are scattered over a wide area or a log is filled with honey to create a tool-using challenge.

In another exercise, the orangutan are presented with items they are likely to find in the forest, such as branches with bark and leaves, green coconuts, pieces of a termite mound, and so on, in order to familiarize them with their intended environment and to teach them to distinguish food items.

The process of rehabilitation is long, slow, and problematic, with an uncertain prognosis. An orangutan must generally reach the age of four, the age when most wild animals start to become independent of their mothers, before they are released. Even so, it is hard to judge the success of the program, although according to some estimates, less than fifty percent survive. Adi Susilo, former project manager of the Wanariset Orangutan Reintroduction Project estimates that sixty percent of animals return to areas inhabited by humans.

So far, the project has been responsible for the release of four hundred apes, with several hundred others waiting their turn. However, sadly, even if every ex-captive processed by Wanariset were successfully returned to the wild, it would still have a limited impact on the conservation of the species. Even if 200 orangutans of those released survive, that would still only be slightly more than one percent of the total population of 15,000 suriviving animals.

Nonetheless, the Wanariset Orangutan Reintroduction Project plays a vital role in the development of awareness, perhaps the most important step in the conservation of any species. Thus, the Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation places equal emphasis on supporting the enforcement of laws protecting the forest, laws against poaching, and on preventing the illegal pet trade; on educating local people to live in harmony with orangutan through the teaching of economically valuable vocational skills; and on preserving critical orangutan habitat through publicity campaigns and other means.

Through campaigns such as these, it is hoped that humanity will learn to live in harmony with its closest cousin, the wild orangutan.

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