Struggle for survival between Borneos and orangutans for food

On November 4, 2011, the world reverberated with shock news about the death of 691 orangutans, slaughtered by starving villagers in the rain forests of Kalimatan, Borneo. A resulting study involved about 7,000 natives in 698 villages.

Desperately needing food, the hungry villagers of Borneo have lost their usual source of food as starving animals have moved onto nearby farmland to look for food. With a world population of 7 billion people, horrific sights like this will become common place scenarios.

According to the Daily Mail in the UK, "Miss Suci Utami Atmoko, a field co-ordinator with The Nature Conservancy, said hunger was the main reason for killing and eating the orang-utans.' Some residents were desperate and had no other choice but to kill them after spending three days hunting for food.' "

However, there are other reasons why the Borneo villagers kill these great apes other than food: using the meat for traditional medicines; fear of the apes attacking their villages; and to sell the surviving orangutan babies to pet markets.

The survey by the Nature Conservancy was done from April of 2008 to September of 2009. Additional groups involved in it was the World Wildlife Fund, the People's Resource and Conservation Foundation Indonesia, and the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation. The results showed that approximately 70% of the villagers were aware the orangutan s were not only protected but were an endangered species.

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Sarawak tourism partners upbeat on business opportunities from ITB Asia

KUCHING: Sarawak tourism partners are optimistic the recent Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) participation in the Trade Show for the Asian Travel Market (ITB Asia) in Singapore will encourage some great business opportunities for local travel trade members.

STB regional marketing manager, Kevin Nila, said participating industry partners from Sarawak were expected to be able to meet their marketing target
despite the issue relating to Firefly’s impending discontinuation of flights from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching and Sibu.

“STB took up a booth at ITB Asia, one of the world’s largest travel trade show organised by Messe Berlin, Singapore in October,” he said in a statement.

He said this year the three-day show in Suntec Convention Centre received a large number of participants, many of whom were key decision makers with 7,511 trade visitors representing 91 countries attending it.

Sarawak travel industry partners who joined STB booth at this year’s show were Borneo Adventure Tours, Greatown Travel, Straits Central Tours, Borneo Jungle Safari, Borneo Convention Centre Kuching and Pullman Hotel Kuching.

All these Sarawak tourism partners hoped to increase their share of the business for next year despite economic uncertainties, he said.

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Joint promotion of Sarawak tourism

KUCHING: Tourism Ministry, Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) and Federation of Sarawak Tourism (STF) will be working together to promote interesting local products through attractive documentations and promotions.

Assistant Minister of Tourism Datuk Talib Zulpilip said the state had the potential to contribute to the expected 36 million tourists arrival to the country by year 2020.

“We have a lot of natural attractions that are potentially tourist destinations. Sarawak also has its own unique natural settings that are suitable for activities like kayaking, mountain climbing, and jungle trekking, which are still unknown to foreigners,” he said in a phone interview yesterday.

He was responding to Tourism Minister Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen’s statement on the 36 million foreign tourists expected to arrive here in 2020 with estimated RM168 billion revenue.

However, he said air transportation issues that the state is currently facing should be adressed immediately as they would affect the state government’s efforts to reach that figure.

STF’s president Audry Wan Ullok said they would cooperate with STB and Tourism Ministry to identify new tourism products that had the potential to attract international toursits.

She explained that tourists from peninsular Malaysia were the main contributors to the state’s tourists arrival and as such, there was an urgent need to resolve the air accessibility issues.

“To increase foreign tourists arrival to the state, Kuching International Airport (KIA) should be the hub for international flights in the region especially to enable direct flights from Singapore,” she said.

STB’s chief executive officer Dato Rashid Khan stressed they were on the right path based on an overwhelming tourists arrival of 16.5 per cent.

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Sipadan dive operators’ painful sacrifice pays off

SEMPORNA: “Moving out from Sipadan Island was a painful sacrifice. We not only lost millions of Ringgit but lost many of our customers as well,” said Borneo Divers managing director Clement Lee.

This was his spontaneous response when asked on his feeling after Clement and other dive resort operators were asked to vacate Sipadan Island in 2004, after occupying the island for about 10 years.

The directive from the state government came about after the marine environment and underwater habitat of the 12-hectare Sipadan Island National Park was adversely affected by human activities.

Construction of physical infrastructure such as resorts and other facilities to meet the increasing demand from divers all over the world at the end endangered the fragile marine ecosystem around the park.

The most apparent decline was the number of marine species, which were abundant around the island when the place was first explored by Borneo Divers in 1993.

However, Clement who pioneered the diving industry in Sipadan Island in 1994 and other dive operators have no regret over their decision to cooperate with the authorities for the sake of preserving Sipadan Island for the future generation.

“So we left, thinking that we were doing the right thing and investing in our future,” said Clement adding had they continued their stay on Sipadan the destruction there could have been worse. After vacating the island, they continued with diving activities there but kept strict to the regulations introduced by the government including limiting the number of divers to the park to 120 compared with the unlimited numbers previously.

After moving out, Clement opened a dive resort on 2.6 hectares of land in Mabul Island, located about 15 minutes away from Sipadan by speed boat.

Clement and other dive operators’ sacrifice had significantly changed Sipadan as researches found that the marine life there has regenerated fast and the underwater environment had improved tremendously.

“Absolutely after seven years, now the marine life there has improved. What I had personally seen before, I see it now. I can compare the past and present. I have seen the good sign for sure,” said Clement based on his and his diving friends’ observation on Sipadan now.

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Borneo's Endangered Orangutans Pay Price of Progress

Just a week after the last known Javan rhino was reported dead in Vietnam, a new study shows that orangutan hunting is on the rise in one of that animal's last refuges, the Borneo region of Kalimantan. With swathes of forests being cleared for industry, the endangered primates are entering villages and plantations for food - leading villagers to kill them as pests or to eat them.

The conversion of Kalimantan’s forests into concessions for logging, pulp and paper and mining has long been a threat to the survival of the orangutan. But it is not the only one.

Dr. Erik Meijaard is the chief scientist behind the survey conducted by The Nature Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group. He says that shrinking forests go hand in hand with the mounting slaughter of endangered orangutans by local communities.

Dr. Meijard says bushmeat is part of the local lifestyle, so even if hunters are not looking for orangutans, they will eat them when they catch them.

“A lot of people like orangutan meat. I mean, people describe it as a sweet meat that has a good taste apparently. So I think that once people do have an orangutan they are quite happy to eat it… The average hunter in Borneo will be targeting pigs and deer. They are the biggest animals with the most meat. But sometimes if you don't get anything and you can catch an orangutan you'll take it.”

Conducted in more than 600 villages in Kalimantan, the survey showed that orangutans are sometimes deliberately targetted.

Local villagers told the researchers that oil palm companies have paid them to eradicate the endangered animals. The companies see them as pests, explains Dr. Damayanti, a lecturer in Ecology at the Agriculture Institute in Bogor who was involved in the study.

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