|
8th July, 2008
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s isolated orang utan population in Kinabatangan may become extinct in less than 50 years if conservation measures are not taken urgently.
This was based on genetic modeling carried out by conservation geneticist Dr. Benoit Goossens of Cardiff University and Dr. Isabelle Lackman-Ancrenaz of HUTAN not long ago.
A study carried out jointly by the Wildlife Department and HUTAN, a French NGO in 2004 showed that 60 per cent of Sabah’s legendary ‘wild man of the rainforest’ live in unprotected areas.
As such, HUTAN director Dr March Ancrenaz said it is essential to take conservation measures to protect these orang-utans and the measures would by necessity be specific to each region.
The Wildlife Department and Hutan, he said, had been studying orang utan occurrence in protected and unprotected areas for a number of years.
“Together with our partners, we have engaged landowners such as the Sabah Foundation, the Sabah Forestry Department as well as private landowners (mostly oil palm plantations) in developing innovative conservation strategies to address the issue of orang-utan in unprotected areas,” he said.
Dr Ancrenaz said creating wildlife corridors linking isolated lots of forest that are home to orang-utan as well as other wildlife such as the Bornean pygmy elephants, are absolutely crucial to ensure that the apes continue to exist in Kinabatangan.
He said although the Kinabatangan population of 1,100 orang utans was more than enough for their survival many of them were separated into small pockets of less then 250 animals.
Much more work needs to be done to ensure the survival of the orang utans.
The pockets of orang utan population need a minimum number of 250 individuals to survive in the long term.
On the 2004 study conducted by the Wildlife Department and HUTAN Dr Ancrenaz said it is vital for orang utan conservation as up to that point scientists in other areas of Borneo and Sumatra (the only two places in the world the orang utans survive in the wild) were mostly studying and working on orang utan populations within primary forests which were almost all protected areas, such as national parks.
“We need efforts and cooperation from everyone including plantation and land owners to ensure the long term survival of the orang utans,” he added.
HUTAN has been working together with the Wildlife Department to develop and implement solutions to conserve the orang utans in Sabah for the past 10 years.
|
