Episode 3 : Lower Kinabatangan, Borneo

Our international team's mission takes them on an incredible journey into the heart of Borneo's rainforest. There, the “man of the forest”, the Orang-utan is fighting for survival as new development threatens to take over its native habitat. Due to logging, vast swathes of the rainforest have been laid bare – making it impossible for the Orang-utans to cross from the remaining small pockets of forest that have become cut off. If they have any chance of survival, tree paths through the jungle have to be restored and our team has to do it. With 100 trees to plant and the area’s first-ever double rope-bridge to build, it's going to be a fight. But the jungle is fighting back - with monsoon rains, 80% humidity and a variety of very unfriendly jungle bugs. The team's morale is in shreds as they face the prospect of failure. It looks like they've finally met their match.

Orang-utans fast facts:

• Orang-utan is derived from Malay words meaning man of the forest.
• Orang-utans are now only found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in south-east Asia.
• In Borneo, orang-utan populations are estimated to total about 55,000. In Sumatra, the estimate is approximately 7,500.
• About half of the forest previously containing orang-utans has been lost over the past 30 years, due to a combination of deliberate conversion to plantations and widespread forest fires during El Nino drought years.
• In Sabah (Malaysian Borneo) about 70% of the estimated 11,000 remaining wild orang-utans live in timber production forests.
• About 1,000 wild orang-utans live in a scattered array of small protected forests, situated in the floodplain of the Kinabatangan River, eastern Sabah. These forests are surrounded by oil palm plantations, which act as a barrier to the movement of orang-utans.
  

Dionysius Sharma - National Programme Director WWF Malaysia

		Dino started his conservation career studying ecology at the University of Malaya and then completed a PhD in Conservation Biology at the University of Kent in the UK. He manages the entire conservation programme of WWF-Malaysia, providing vision, technical guidance and leadership. His other key function is to ensure that there’s enough money to undertake the crucial conservation work carried out by WWF and its partners. After sixteen years at WWF Dino’s greatest wish is that enough natural areas of nature are both set aside and used sustainably for endangered species to survive.
He hopes he can one day leave WWF knowing that others will carry on the conservation mission. On Planet Action, Dino says it was great fun watching the team undertake their missions, that no-one was anywhere near giving up and, even if they were, they certainly weren’t showing it!

Project Update

Since the team left the lower Kinabatangan, the Sabah State Government has announced a significant re-gazettement of the 26,103 hectare Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. The areas protected under this re-gazettement include the two locations where the team collected the orang-utan food tree seedlings and replanted them! The re-gazettement empowers the Wildlife Department to monitor and manage the wildlife – plants and animals in the sanctuary. WWF and the Wildlife Department will join forces to improve the protection of Borneo’s important wildlife and their habitats in lower Kinabatangan. In addition, WWF has convinced an oil palm company to voluntarily move their 1-Kilometer long electric fence 100 meters away from the wildlife movement pathway and to replant 80 trees along the Kinabatangan River. Dino and his team are now actively working with local people and companies to not only enhance the management and security of the Wildlife Sanctuary, but also to provide alternative livelihoods for the local communities in the lower Kinabatangan. The WWF Kinabatangan team is also working with oil palm companies to reconnect fragmented forest patches to restore a forest corridor called Corridor of Life.

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