Borneo Orangutan Survival
The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation is an Indonesian non-profit NGO founded by Dr Willie Smits in 1991 and dedicated to the conservation of the endangered Bornean orangutan and its habitat through the involvement of local people. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates under the formal agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Forest to conserve and rehabilitate orangutans. BOS manages orangutan rescue, rehabilitation and re-introduction programmes in East and Central Kalimantan. With more than 500 orangutans in its care and employing between six hundred and a thousand people at a hundred sites BOS is the biggest primate conservation NGO worldwide. Nyaru Menteng and Samboja Lestari are the BOS sites that have received most extensive media coverage. Nyaru Menteng, founded by Lone Drøscher Nielsen, has been the subject of a number of TV series, including Orangutan Diary and Orangutan Island.
History
BOS Foundation was founded in 1991 by the ecologist Dr. Willie Smits and the teacher Peter Karsono, supported by researchers at the Tropenbos Kalimantan Program and schoolchildren of Balikpapan. As its sphere of activity broadened, it was renamed the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in 1994. Since then it has received increasing recognition in Indonesia and globally, with sister organizations in 11 other countries.Orangutans endangered
The Bornean orangutans are endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and listed on Appendix I of CITES.The total number of Bornean orangutans is estimated to be less than 14 percent of what it was in the recent past and this sharp decline has occurred mostly over the past few decades due to human activities and development. Their habitat is so much reduced that they are now only to be found in pockets of remaining rainforest. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment too is at risk. According to the IUCN, it is expected that in 10 to 30 years orangutans will be extinct if there is no serious effort to overcome the threats that they are facing.
This view is also supported by the United Nations Environment Programme, which states in its report that due to deforestation by illegal logging, fire and the extensive development of oil palm plantations, orangutans are endangered, and if the current trend continues, they will become extinct.
Aims
- Orangutan reintroduction
- The rehabilitation and habitat protection of wildlife that is protected under law, especially orangutans
- Information, outreach and education, community capacity-building, community empowerment and public awareness-raising.
Orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centres
Wanariset
Wanariset began as a tropical forest research station near Balikpapan in the Indonesian Province of East Kalimantan and was developed as an orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre.Nyaru Menteng
is an orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre 28 km from Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan. Lone Drøscher Nielsen sought the advice of Smits about the possibility of creating a new project in Central Kalimantan to deal with the swelling numbers of orphaned orangutans. Smits agreed to help and, with the financial backing of the Gibbon Foundation and BOS Indonesia, Drøscher Nielsen founded Nyaru Menteng in 1998. She was able to build the facility under an agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, and Nyaru Menteng officially opened its doors to the first dozen orangutans in 1999.The sanctuary was designed to hold up to 100 orphaned orangutans while they go through rehabilitation. In addition to quarantine cages, medical clinic, and nursery, the sanctuary had a large area of forest in which orangutans could learn the skills needed to live in the wild. Nyaru Menteng quickly became the largest primate rescue project in the world.
Many of these orangutans are only weeks old when they arrive, and all of them are psychologically traumatized. The sanctuary not only saves the mostly orphaned baby orangutans from the local farmers and illegal pet-traders, but has developed a process for their gradual re-introduction to the remaining Borneo rainforest.
As of 2009, up to 20 young orangutans arrive every month. The centre's running costs are $1.5m a year. There are 170 staff: babysitters, assistants, people working in the medical department, guards and other workers. Associated with the centre are:
- "The Workers' Village" which accommodates workers from outside the locality;
- The Islands: Kaja, Palas I. and II., Hampapak Matei and Bangamat, all islands in the Rongan River with primitive feeding-platforms and jetties;
- The Information Centre, where local schools visit, and from where information campaigns about alternatives to the cutting are sent out all over Borneo.
- The Fruit plantation, "Nyaru Menteng Lestari", 3 ha planted with fruit-bearing trees, such as mango, pineapple and rambutan.
Now there are 30 calls each year, according to Orangutan Jungle School which is filmed at Nyaru Mengteng.
Forest conservation, reforestation and research
Samboja Lestari
is a reforestation project on nearly of deforested, degraded and burnt land in East Kalimantan. In 2001, BOS started purchasing land near Wanariset. The area it acquired had been deforested by mechanical logging, drought and severe fires and was covered in alang-alang grass. The aim was to restore the rainforest and provide a safe haven for rehabilitated orangutans while at the same time providing a source of income for local people. The name Samboja Lestari roughly translates as the "everlasting conservation of Samboja". Reforestation and rehabilitation is the core of the project, with hundreds of indigenous species planted. By the middle of 2006 over 740 different tree species had been planted; by 2009 there were 1200 species of trees, 137 species of birds and nine species of primates.The Orangutan Reintroduction Project at Wanariset was moved to Samboja Lestari. "Forest Schools" were established, areas that provide natural, educational playgrounds for the orangutans in which to learn forest skills. Here the orangutans roam freely but under supervision and are returned to sleeping cages for the night. "Orangutan islands" were created where the orangutans and other wildlife that cannot return to the wild are nevertheless able to live in almost completely natural conditions.
Alongside the orangutan reintroduction work, BOS has promoted forms of farming that do not involve burning and destroying forests, by switching to agriculture combining rattan, sugar palms and fruits and vegetables. A community has developed that can now support itself on the land. Smits believes that to develop the orangutan population, their forest habitat must first be built; also, to achieve sustainable solutions the root social problems must be addressed by empowering local communities to take up livelihood options that is more rewarding than logging.
In his 2009 TED talk Smits claimed there had been a substantial increase in cloud cover and 30% more rainfall due to the reforestation at Samboja Lestari.
To finance the nature reserve, BOS created a system of "land-purchasing", a "Create Rainforest" initiative where donors can symbolically adopt square metres of rainforest and are able to view and follow the progress of their "purchase" in the project area with Google Earth satellite images from 2002 and 2007 with additional information overlaid.
The Samboja Lodge was established to provide accommodation for visitors and volunteers at Samboja. Its design was based upon local architecture and its interior and exterior walls are made of recycled materials.
The SarVision Satellite Natural Resources Monitoring Centre was established to monitor deforestation and illegal logging and the relentless growth of palm oil in unsuitable locations. A study commissioned by WWF Netherlands with SarVision showed that almost half of present oil palm plantations are not located on suitable land. The use of satellite technology and GIS has enabled Sarvison to monitor forests down to the individual tree level, to develop accountability in the management of the forest and identify where palm oil plantations are destroying areas of forest illegally.
Mawas
Mawas is a forest conservation, reforestation and research area in Central Kalimantan. The Mawas project is now in its development phase.The main aim of the project is to protect the fast-disappearing peat lands through collaboration with the Central and Local Governments and the local communities. The Mawas area is home to one of the last tracts of forest supporting wild orangutans. An estimated 3,000 wild orangutans are found in this area. Mawas is also important for its biodiversity and the geological conditions of Mawas make it a storage house of giga-tonnes of sequestered carbon. Over a period of 8,000 years, decaying plant matter from the swamp forests has built up 13 – 15 metre high domes of peat.
In September 2003, the provincial parliament in Central Kalimantan approved a new land use plan that designates in the Mawas area to be managed by BOS for conservation. BOS is currently working in an area of about within the ex-Mega Rice Project area.
BOS has initiated a forest conservation project with the objectives of:
- conserving peat swamp forest area including reforesting degraded areas;
- preserving the bio-diversity of the area;
- providing global greenhouse gas benefits;
- providing access to programs such as health and education; and
- improving incomes and building capacity and economic prosperity in local communities
- assisting communities in learning technical skills including aquaculture, rice cultivation, agro-forestry and farm development
- assisting local independence and self-sustaining livelihoods.
- providing education to children on the environment and conservation, by visiting schools
- providing community awareness programs as well as co-operative conservation programs.