Geographer - Royal Scottish Geographical Society

Education
Orang-utan research project
Graham L Banes
“In 2008, the Society took a ‘leap of
faith’ and made a small grant to fund
our expedition: by June of that year,
Orang-utan ’08 was in full swing.”
Main shot:
Kusasi is the
dominant male
orang-utan.
An orang-utan
welcomes us to
Tanjung Puting
National Park.
Counting ‘nests’
involved looking
up at the tree
and trying to
distinguish
the sleeping
platforms from
the foliage
surrounding
them. When a
tree contained a
nest, we tagged it
with bright-orange
tape to facilitate
re-counts and
prevent us from
counting the
same nest twice.
All travel within
the Park,
including along
the crocodileinfested
Sekonyer
river, was by
kelotok, a sort
of motorised
longboat; here,
local children
watch us load up.
An infant orangutan.
The Bornean orang-utan is an
endangered species endemic
to the island of Borneo, where
less than 54,000 individuals are
thought to remain in a small
number of wild populations. Of
all species, they are among the
most closely-related to humans –
we share 96.5% of our DNA with
orang-utans and their name, from
Malay, even translates to ‘person
of the forest’. Despite
this, we do little to
respect our arboreal
kin: orang-utans
are continually
threatened by
habitat loss,
hunting and the
pet trade. More
than 90% of
original orang-utan
habitat is thought to
have already been
destroyed.
My intention to study orangutans
was realised at the
University of Aberdeen, while
reading my Bachelor’s degree in
Zoology. When given the option
of writing a ‘standard’ thesis or
going further afield to collect
primary data, I opted to head
for Indonesia to study orangutans
in the wild. I was fortunate
to receive ample support from
academic staff, notably Dr David
Burslem and Prof Paul Racey,
who encouraged me to plan
an expedition and to recruit
three fellow students to assist
in data collection. Procuring
financial support was rather
more difficult, however. Despite
having spent months planning
a sound expedition, and despite
having gained approval from the
Indonesian authorities, we were
turned down by innumerable
funding organisations. Nobody
wanted to fund undergraduate
students, especially those who
had no experience of field work
and who had never seen orangutans
outside of the zoo.
An orang-utan and I sit
companionably around a tree.
The RSGS was a notable
exception. In 2008, the Society
took a ‘leap of faith’ and made
a small grant to fund our
expedition: by June of that year,
Orang-utan ’08 was in full swing.
Over five months, we conducted
line-transect surveys of orangutan
sleeping platforms to
determine population density in
Tanjung Puting National Park,
Central Kalimantan. Our
study was the first to
assess the orangutan
population
in Tanjung Puting
since 2003 and was
the first to conduct
line-transect surveys
at primary peatswamp
forest sites. We
determined Tanjung
Puting to harbour up
to 9,000 orang-utans, rendering
it home to the world’s largest
orang-utan population. We also
found that the orang-utans there
could adapt well in the long term
following logging, once forest
has been left to recover. Notably,
we observed no evidence of
orang-utans in sites disturbed
by fire, concluding that efforts to
safeguard Tanjung Puting should
remain a conservation priority.
I remain eternally grateful to
the RSGS: our expedition would
not have been possible without
the support and encouragement
of the Society’s board and
members. However, our research
doesn’t end here: I remain
committed to the orang-utans of
Tanjung Puting and now continue
my work at the University of
Cambridge. Please visit our
website (www.prime.bioanth.
cam.ac.uk/graham) to read more
about our orang-utan research
programme, funded in part by
the RSGS.