Writing for life

Curious how bad things can have beneficial side effects.

The raging civil war in Indonesia’s Aceh province on the island of Sumatra, for example, could hardly be considered a good thing; yet for the beleaguered Sumatran orang-utan it’s proving to be a blessing. The war has prevented logging and palm oil operations from exploiting the fragile Leuser Ecosystem that spans the Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, providing the dwindling orang-utan population with a safe haven, for the time being at least.

If the civil war hadn’t happened and they all operated and clear the forest, we’ll be dealing with a few hundred orangutans now, and if they clear these extra bits of forests here in the near future, then the same thing will happen again. All the orangutan will die. They don’t sort of like pack their bags and move somewhere else. They stay and die,

Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, told Reuters in North Sumatra’s provincial capital, Medan.

You can read the full article on the ENN site.

I went trekking in Gunung Leuseur back in 1998, and had the privilege of experiencing this amazing ecosystem first hand. We even encountered wild orang-utans, which was amazing. In 2003 I wrote an article for Wild Ireland magazine on the plight of the orang-utan. At the time experts were predicting that orang-utan populations could disappear entirely within a decade. Four years on, and the great red ape is still clinging to a precarious existence, but with palm oil and logging concerns ravaging the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, just how much longer can they hold on?

An orang-utan swinging through its rainforest home in Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra

For more on the plight of the orang-utan take a look at these sites:

• Orangutan Foundation International
• Orangutan Foundation UK
• Orangutan Conservancy
• Orangutan on Wikepedia

And here’s a link with details of Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra.

You can read a species profiles for the Sumatran orang-utan and the Bornean orang-utan on Arkive.org.

Three things you can do today to help the orangutan:

• Check labelling and stop buying products that contain palm oil — typically found in many foodstuffs and cosmetics
• Make sure the paper you use at home and at work originates from a properly certified, sustainable source
• When you choose timber products, make sure that the timber comes from properly certified, sustainably managed forestry

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