borneo-orangutanConservationists are celebrating the discovery of up to several thousand orangutans on the Indonesian island of Borneo – a find that considerably bolsters the total estimated population of the endangered great ape.

While many orangutan communities are threatened by human encroachment and deforestation, those discovered in the mountain forests of East Kalimantan Province have been protected by the region’s rugged landscape.

Researchers from the Nature Conservancy group exploring part of the two million-acre region in December had to drive for a day, take a boat for another and hike over steep mountain terrain for two more days to investigate claims of orangutan sightings by locals, according to a report on CNN.com.

They were rewarded for their efforts by the discovery of more than 200 nests – enough to support an orangutan population of “several hundred to several thousand,” according to Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist with Nature Conservancy. Orangutans sleep on platforms made of branches and leaves suspended from trees.

Orangutan experts currently estimate the global population of the apes at approximately 65,000. They had previously dismissed the chances of finding the creatures in the region because the apes usually choose swampy forests with lots of fruit trees.

The apes found in East Kalimantan belong to a sub-species of orangutan with darker hair than the customarily red-haired creatures.

“We rarely have something positive to report in the conservation world. Most of the stories are about declining population or animals dying. It’s all pretty negative,” Meijaard told CNN.

“So to find a substantial population of potentially several hundred to several thousand animals is very exciting.”

Writing in his blog, Meijaard said it as crucial for conservationists to work with local governments to protect orangutan habitats and prevent ape populations from suffering further declines.

Nardiyono, a local researcher who led the expedition and who, like many Indonesians, has only one name, told AFP the apes had probably fled to the region during massive forest fires in the mid-1990s.

“We saw a family of three orangutans during the trip, the mother, her baby and a male. The male orangutan was angry with us and kept breaking branches and throwing them at us,” he said.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Discoveries, Mammals, Primates, Wild, apes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.