Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A New Orangutan Population on Borneo




Finding a new population of any species is good news in conservation. But finding a hitherto undiscovered population of orangutans (see one in the video above) is really exciting. And we did just that.

In December 2008, we found a significant population of Bornean orangutans. This is some welcome news on a generally gloomy conservation agenda.

Orangutans are among the rarest primates on Earth. Populations are plummeting under the various pressures on their forest habitats. An increasing demand for timber, palm oil, coal and other things desired by the world’s growing human population makes life for orangutans very difficult these days.

So, we all got pretty excited when our field team came back from a survey in a really inaccessible part of Borneo with photos and videos of orangutans. They had traveled to the heart of a 2-million-acre forest area situated in the rugged Sangkulirang limestone mountains in East Kalimantan Province.

Continue reading at: A New Orangutan Population on Borneo
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