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A refuge for orangutans presents a quandary for environmentalist

SALAT ISLAND (Indonesia) — In the lush rain forests of central Borneo, a group of young orangutans, endangered refugees from human development, swung from branch to branch.

Orangutans at a pre-release island in the delta of the Kahayan River in Pulang Pisau Regency, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, April 5, 2017. Photo: The New York Times

Orangutans at a pre-release island in the delta of the Kahayan River in Pulang Pisau Regency, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, April 5, 2017. Photo: The New York Times

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SALAT ISLAND (Indonesia) — In the lush rain forests of central Borneo, a group of young orangutans, endangered refugees from human development, swung from branch to branch.

One, named Lykke, who had been found stranded on a palm oil plantation when she was just a month old, snagged a pineapple left by her handlers and scampered up a tree, where she began tearing into the ripe fruit.

She was one of 13 adolescent orangutans recently transported to an unspoiled, 5,200-acre tract of Salat Island, acquired last year by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, a non-profit founded in 1991. When they reached the sanctuary, the auburn-maned apes clambered out of the cages they had arrived in and climbed up to freedom.

The release of the orangutans this month was the second installment in what may ultimately be the relocation of hundreds of orangutans currently housed in cages in a nearby rescue shelter.

As Borneo’s rain forests are rapidly destroyed by development, nonprofit organisations have struggled to find new habitat to relocate the rescued animals that are ready to return to the wild. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation called Salat a “major breakthrough” in helping to save the species.

“This is a massive push for liberation,” said Jacqueline Sunderland-Groves, the foundation’s deputy chief executive. As the group empties its cages, she said, “We’re hoping to go from being the world’s largest orangutan rehabilitation center to the smallest.”

For the last decade, the foundation has eyed the island as a potential orangutan haven: Fertile with fruit trees, guarded from poachers by rivers and with no indigenous orangutan population to compete with for territory. But acquiring it seemed like a pipe dream: The sums involved were immense, and getting the local government’s buy-in presented a major bureaucratic challenge.

Until early last year, when a major Indonesian palm oil company, PT Sawit Sumbermas Sarana, swooped in and purchased part of the island for orangutan rehabilitation. The company even agreed to pay some of the foundation’s costs for monitoring and maintaining the island.

“We believe we could coexist,” the company’s chief executive, Vallauthan Subraminam, said in an interview as orangutans swung past overhead after being released.

But the foundation’s partnership with a palm oil company worries some environmentalists, who are concerned that it provides a flawed company an easy cloak of respectability. The huge expansion of palm oil plantations is widely acknowledged to be a key driver of rain-forest destruction in Indonesia, which deprives the orangutans of habitat.

“Isolated acts of kindness by bad actors like PT SSS don’t erase that history and current pattern of destructive behavior, and they won’t save the Borneo orangutan from destruction,” said Gemma Tillack, the agribusiness campaign director at the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental organisation, referring to the palm oil company by its initials. If the company was serious about protecting the species, she added, it would make a binding commitment to end deforestation on its plantations.

In the interview, Subraminam said his company had turned a page on its past.

“We have to start somewhere now, so that we can have a better future,” he said. “We can only correct ourselves now.”

But organisations that monitor the industry say they have yet to see a correction. Satellite imagery captured by Chain Reaction Research, a risk-management research institute, showed active deforestation on concessions managed by a subsidiary of Sawit Sumbermas Sarana as recently as last May.

Concerns over deforestation have led some major palm oil buyers, including Wilmar, the world’s largest refiner of palm oil, to halt purchases from the company. But for the orangutan foundation, the chance to release as many as 200 orangutans from cages was difficult to pass up.

“If you say you don’t want to use their support, OK, where do you get your support for the orangutan?” said Jamartin Sihite, the foundation’s chief executive.

The Bornean orangutan was declared critically endangered last year, after research showed that its population had declined by more than 80 per cent over the last 75 years, mainly because of habitat destruction.

Nearly every week government agencies and locals notify the foundation of baby orangutans that were taken as pets by villagers, usually after their mothers were killed as pests.

“The ones who actually reach us are the survivors,” Sunderland-Groves said.

The organisation then spends years rehabilitating the often-traumatised young orangutans. At the foundation’s forest school, local women working as surrogate orangutan mothers train the youngsters in survival skills, from identifying predators to learning which foods are safe to eat.

“They’re like human children,” said Hanni Puspita Sari, who tends to orangutans at the facility. “The only difference is they can’t talk.”

But after a few years of forest school, many orangutans are returned to their cages. At one facility, 110 adult orangutans languished in interlocking cages, shaking the bars and releasing occasional howls.

“It sometimes feels like Guantnamo,” Sunderland-Groves said. “These animals aren’t meant to live in cages.”

But suitable release sites are increasingly hard to find because of rapid deforestation and the difficulty of acquiring land permits in Indonesia. The organisation released 56 orangutans into remote rain forests last year while taking in 61 new arrivals. This year, the group hopes to release around 150 orangutans, thanks largely to Salat Island.

Most will live on Salat until the organisation can find a permanent space for them in a larger protected forest.

Some conservationists consider such programs counterproductive, an expensive distraction from the critical mission of habitat protection.

“Rehabilitation centers may even make the deforestation process worse,” said Erik Meijaard, director of Borneo Futures, a conservation group. “It goes full circle: Palm oil companies get rid of the forests, send in their orangutans along with some money. That’s just not how things can be if we’re serious about saving orangutans and other wildlife.”

Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation officials acknowledged that orangutan rehabilitation was not cost-effective, but said that, unfortunately, their services were needed.

The day after the release on Salat, phones rang at the center. People in a village a few hours away had taken in a young orangutan, its mother nowhere to be found. The foundation sent a team to fetch the orangutan and bring it to the center. THE NEW YORK TIMES

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