27/12/05 (The Star)  -  While there is no clear documentation of brutality against orang utans linked to the expansion of oil palm plantation in Malaysia, the fate of the Bornean subspecies in Sabah (Pongo pygmaeus morio) is not any better than its cousin in Indonesia.

Shrinking home range, no thanks to the relentless conversion of lowland forest of the Kinabatangan basin into oil palm plantations, has resulted in an increase in the number of orphaned and displaced orang utans at the famed Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary.

Far from being a success story of orang utan conservation, the centre is a stark testimony to the failure in protecting the habitat of the sole Asian ape.

“Sepilok is a joke. It only serves the purpose of showing the orang utan to foreign and local tourists. There is no plan for reintroduction. It is just another feel-good conservation project that disguises the true consequences of deforestation,” says forestry researcher Lim Teck Wyn.

It is near impossible to return orang utans to the wild. The highly fragmented Kinabatangan forest can hardly sustain the existing pockets of orang utan populations. 

Calls for gazettement of the 26,103ha Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary were ignored until the intervention of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi after The Star highlighted the massive destruction there in July.

The Friends of the Earth (UK) report The oil for ape scandal: How palm oil is threatening orang utan survival said the highly degraded wildlife sanctuary is fragmented into 10 units by oil palm plantations and other land uses, preventing the migration of animals such as elephants and orang utans.

Kinabatangan is one of only two places in Asia that are inhabited by 10 primate species. It has the largest population of orang utans in Malaysia and is possibly the most important wetland orang utan habitat in the world. 

The high population densities are a direct consequence of habitat clearance, forcing individuals into high concentrations in remaining fragments.

WWF-Malaysia which has been engaging the industry through its Partners for Wetland programme since 1998 concedes that every hectare of forest converted to plantation contributes to bringing species such as orang utan, closer to extinction.

No single factor has been a greater cause of declines in wildlife population than loss of habitat. And no one aspect of changes in habitat conditions has been more insidious than that of forest fragmentation or conversion of forest to plantation, it said in a statement.

The programme is encouraging oil palm companies to set aside land for reforestation for a wildlife corridor that connects the fragmented forest to recreate the animal migration pathway as a solution to human-wildlife conflict.

It also disagrees with the industry’s claim that oil palm plantations are rich in bio-diversity. It clarifies that presence of 268 species of microbes, insects, fish, birds and small mammals in an oil palm plantation should not be equated with ‘conserving biodiversity’.

“The only way to conserve bio-diversity is to retain as much forest as possible in as good a condition as possible,” it said.