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An Asia-Pacific Letter HomeMail delivery between East Kalimantan, Indonesia and Sweden can often be slow. Linda Engström, sent this letter to her mother in July but it's just now come through. Read along with Mrs. Engström as she learns about her daughter's adventures in the rain forests of Borneo where she and a Conservancy team went in search of, and found, the elusive orangutan.
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25 July 2002 Dear Mum, I'm sitting on a tiny propeller plane flying over the Berau District on the east coast of Borneo Island, where I've been working now for almost 8 months! I'm on my way back to Berau from Malaysia, where I've extended my visa for the third time. The air conditioner is dripping water on my shirt, and the little plane is vibrating from the engine movements. As usual, the plane is full of people, and the aisle is full of luggage and chickens and vegetables. Through the small round window I can gaze over vast areas with beautiful, green and intact forest. This district still has one of the largest areas of forest cover left in Indonesia. Large-scale logging started here only a few years ago and now the forest is beginning to disappear here too. As I look out the window I can see the network of logging roads that already extends towards the remote corners of the forest. Large areas are now clear cut, while other areas have only lost certain tree species - the valuable hard wood species that we can buy in our stores at home. The destruction is happening incredibly fast. And it's so frustrating because the profits benefit only a small number of people - an elite - while most people here are still poor. Since the project started late last year we've done about three and a half months of fieldwork. Mum, what is so exciting is… after hiking more than 100 km of survey trail, we have found a large orangutan population! There are at least 1,500 orangutans in the forests around the mountain 'Gunung Gajah' (the Elephant Mountain). This might be a 10% addition to the world's known population of orangutans, and at places the density is as high as in famous Indonesian national parks. The Berau population might be one of the three largest populations of orangutans in the world! Sometimes I can barely believe it… But I remind myself that more surveys are needed to find out more details about the range of this population and also if other forest areas still have orangutans. To find suitable survey sites, we have looked for large undisturbed forests on satellite maps, and asked around in the villages where people have seen orangutans. To get to the predetermined site on the map, we (me, the other team leader Bhayu Pamungkas, and 18 local assistants) leave the city early in the morning on a truck loaded with rice and food cans and research equipment for 2 weeks in the forest. We travel along logging roads in the cool morning air, and when they end, we hike into the untouched forest, sometimes for several days. By a river we build a camp using tree poles, and a tarp as roof. We wash and get cooking and drinking water from the river. Bhayu and I have been teaching and supervising a team of local field assistants to do the survey. Early every morning, while listening to the gibbons calling, we leave camp to hike through the forest. A handheld GPS points out the direction for us. The forest is still cool, but as always very humid, and after only a few minutes our shirts are soaked in sweat. In front, a team member is cutting a trail for us through the dense undergrowth. We hear the forest sounds, but we rarely see the orangutans or any other wildlife. Every night, though, the orangutans make a nest by bending branches high up in the trees, creating a platform to sleep on. This is how we, as most surveyors, count the apes - by the nests, not the animals. No land in Berau District is yet under protection, and all the forest is owned by timber concessions, including The Nature Conservancy survey sites. Therefore, we need to educate and cooperate with all sorts of different stakeholders. This is going to be a difficult process, which has only just started. Still, the local government in Berau realizes the value of this orangutan population, not least as an attraction for future tourists. And the foresters with one logging company are very excited about having orangutans in their forests. These are some hopeful looks into the future for the vast forests of Berau district, and the orangutans living deep inside them. The plane is getting ready to land... I have to go. I will write again soon, Mum. Love, Linda P.S. I've included some pictures as well. Be sure to share them around. |
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At the survey sites, a couple of assistants cut a 1 km long trail, called the midline. Along this midline, we randomly place 8 perpendicular and 500 meter long trails, which we call transects. Along the transect we count the orangutan nests. To spot every nest we have to walk very slowly and be alert all the time, which is difficult. Whenever a nest is spotted, we measure the distance from the trail, the tree size, identify the tree species and estimate the age of the nests into 5 age classes. This data is necessary to convert the number of nests to the number of orangutans, using a specialized computer program. 
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