People of the Forest

In the Indonesian language, the word orangutan means "people of the forest," and that is truly what they are. They look incredibly humanoid sitting in the trees, and many of their behaviors remind me a lot of things humans do. But we also saw another people of the forest while we traveled in Borneo—humans living in small villages along the forested riverbank, living much like they have for hundreds of years. But as modernity brought scooters, electricity, and medicine to these villages, it also brought the need for money, the cause of so many problems in our modern world. Unfortunately, many of the villagers' opportunities to make money are in direct conflict with the wellbeing of the orangutans.

Due to human impact, orangutans have become threatened by habitat loss. They've been forced into a fraction of their former range, and now wild orangutans can only be found among the dispersed rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

We visited Tanjung Puting National Park, located in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is situated on one side of the river Sekonyer, with the river forming a natural border between the park and the palm oil plantations. The Indonesian government has required the plantation companies to stay two km away from the river to avoid water pollution and to maintain a corridor along the river for wild orangutans. One problem: orangutans can't swim. Due to their lack of tails, orangutans can't swim or jump, meaning that those not on the National Park side are stuck where they are, in the narrow green belt on the other side. So now, these orangutans that once roamed great stretches of Southeast Asia and even some of China, are stuck in an area only two km wide. And even that is being threatened by:

Logging: Orangutans and other rainforest dwelling creatures are losing much of their habitat to logging, both illegal and legal. There is high demand for certain woods that grow in Bornean rainforests, such as ironwood and sandalwood. There are some companies that legally log and export these woods, but there are others that log illegally, which is even more harmful. Some local villagers are allowed to cut down timber for their houses and such, to preserve their traditional ways. Despite some of these being legal, much of it still isn't sustainable.

Mining: While much of the illegal mining in Borneo has been cracked down upon, operators remain that search the riverbanks and forests for lithium and gold, and the rainforests are still feeling the effects of past mining. Many illegal miners in Borneo practice an extremely destructive mining technique, called placer mining, which turns the forest soil into a dry, white powder. This makes the area where mining took place unsuitable for growing, and it takes a very long time for the rainforest to return to that area.

Palm Oil: Palm oil has an ever-growing demand and is the number one most used oil in the world. As I'm sure you know, it's in an incredible amount of products, and for good reason: it's colorless, odorless, is stable at high temperatures, semi-solid at room temperature (helping keep spreads spreadable), it's a great emulsifier, and it's cheap. But it still comes at a cost. Eighty-five percent of the world's palm oil supply is grown in Borneo, and the plantations are ever growing. Companies are cutting down huge swaths of jungle to make way for the palms. Even the two km green belt is at risk. According to our river guide, the companies can bribe officials to turn a blind eye to the rules, allowing the plantations to edge ever nearer to the river, sometimes getting as close as 500 meters. Environmentalists are speaking out, but the palm oil industry is hard to stop.

There's big local support for the palm oil companies. This industry provides locals with much needed jobs, and they build housing, clinics, and schools for the workers and their families. They also have installed the local power grid for remote villages along the river. Some locals recognize the plantations are bad for the environment, but palm oil also makes up 4.5% of Indonesia's GDP. From high ranking officials and city dwellers to remote villagers and even our local river guide, all Indonesians suffer when the palm oil industry suffers. However, given the unsustainability of the palm oil industry, the Indonesian and Malaysian governments are searching for economic alternatives to palm oil revenue. Some proposals include:

Farming Swallow Nests: I know it sounds ridiculous, but cities like Pangkalan Bun have already experimented with this, constructing large swallow apartment buildings. People live on the first few floors, and the rest are dedicated to providing space for swallows to nest in. The companies play recorded swallow noises loudly out of the buildings to attract the swallows. You can hear it through the whole city. People, mainly Chinese, believe that swallow nests have medicinal properties. They often make the nests into soups and cosmetics and will pay top dollar for the ingredient. The companies running the buildings have to pay a special tax to the city as well as compensation to the people living in the surrounding areas for all the noise and the abundance of bird poop and feathers.

Agarwood Farming: One of the most valuable natural commodities on the planet, first grade agarwood can be worth up to forty times more than gold. The wood is prized for its smell and is considered one of the best incenses in the world. It is also highly prized in the beauty industry under names like aloes, agar, oud, or aguru. However, agarwood is so expensive that most beauty products dedicated to it don't actually contain any, instead using chemicals to try to produce a similar scent. One of the things that makes agarwood so valuable is its extreme scarcity, resulting from the complicated process required for its creation.

In nature, agarwood is created from the heartwood of certain species of aquilaria trees. First, the tree must be wounded by something like a burrowing beetle or grazing from some sort of animal. This creates a path for a certain type of fungus that then infects the tree. The tree's heartwood secretes a kind of sap to protect itself, turning the normally light, pale heartwood into a dense, resin-filled wood of dark color. This product is then harvested and sold at exorbitant prices.

Recently, it has been discovered that it is possible to artificially inoculate the aquilaria trees with the fungus by boring a hole or injecting it directly into the heartwood. This is much more reliable than waiting for it to develop naturally. The one flaw is that natural agarwood is considered to be up to a hundred times more valuable than artificial agarwood (called inoculated agarwood). Luckily, inoculated agarwood is still quite valuable. Several villages in Indonesia and Malaysia are experimenting with this new technique, and it may provide a reliable source of income for them in the future.

Sustainable Logging: It's still cutting down the forest, but if locals could manage to do it sustainably so that they were always planting new trees and not cutting down any old growth, they could make a lot of money selling valuable rainforest products like ironwood and sandalwood. We had the opportunity to visit a reforestation project currently implementing this concept. They're making good progress but to make a real difference this would need to be adopted on a much larger scale. 

We helped to plant different rainforest trees at a reforestation project along the Sekonyer River. Dad planted an ironwood tree, he called it his "ironwood penance" for woodworking using ironwood scraps (that he stole from Rick).

Ecotourism: If the locals could make more money off of orangutans, it would be a boon for the people of the forest. Orangutans would be more valuable and increased publicity could help conservation efforts. The one problem is that it could make orangutans more habituated to humans. The national park already has to be cut into two sections: one where tourists can see the orangutan feedings and another where orangutans have absolutely no human contact to maintain their natural behavior. More tourists could cause orangutan behavior to change.

We loved visiting Camp Leakey, one of the orangutan conservation stations.

So, all in all, there is no perfect answer to this problem. There are no bad guys, only orangutans trying to live their lives, plantations supporting their country and local villages, and villagers just trying to get by. Many projects have been proposed to help fix this issue, but it is the subject of much debate. All the while, the orangutans' land is ever shrinking.