Saving Gunung Palung: A Rainforest Marriage - Cheryl Knott

More documents

Recommendations

Info

science in the fieldSaving Gunung Palung: A Rainforest MarriageBy Susan LumenelloTheirs is a story grounded in science.He’s a biologist, she’s ananthropologist, and they startedtheir lives together while doing fieldworkin, and helping to save, a 24,000-acre Indonesian rainforest park and itsinhabitants.Cheryl Knott, an assistant professorof anthropology who earned her PhD in1999, and husband Tim Laman, a scientificassociate of the Museum ofComparative Zoology and wildlife photographerwho earned his doctorate inorganismic and evolutionary biology in1994, met as students at the GraduateSchool of Arts and Sciences in the early1990s.A decade later, Knott and Laman areproud parents of three-year-old Russelland his sister-to-be (due in December)—and they’re still working in the rainforest,studying the animal and plantlife unique to the Indonesian island ofBorneo and one of its largest nationalparks, Gunung Palung (pronounced:goo-noong paw-loong). Knott hasmade a career studying orangutans,who only live in the wild in the junglesA match made at GSAS:Tim Laman, PhD ’94,and Cheryl Knott, PhD ’99, in the rainforestcanopy of the Gunung Palung National Park.All photos in this story by Tim Laman.of Indonesia and Malaysia; Laman did hisPhD work on strangler fig trees and hasstudied a variety of creatures in the park asa field scientist for Harvard and a wildlifephotographer for National Geographic.But Gunung Palung and the 5,000-acreCabang Panti research site within it isthreatened, Knott says. Illegal logging hasdegraded large areas of the park and hasnow invaded the study site’s trail system,putting into doubt the survival of the2,500 or so orangutans that live there.According to a recent census taken byKnott’s team, that’s about ten percent ofthe world’s orangutan population; theother approximately 23,000 orangutansreside in national parks and reserves elsewhereon the islands of Borneo andSumatra.From January to February of this year,Knott, Laman, and their colleagues askedIndonesian officials for more protection ofthe site. They wanted to help governmentofficials “realize the importance of thisarea and its uniqueness,” Laman says.“Consequently there was a big patrol—thenational police force went in and clearedthe place out. Hopefully, our efforts hadsomething to do with that.”Illegal logging involves a substantialportion of the village population aroundGunung Palung. “Something like twothirdsof the households in the area areinvolved in illegal logging [around thenational park],” Knott says. “That’s thousandsof people.”The good news is that the park’s forestshave not been clear-cut. The damage hasbeen “selective,” according to Knott. Thebiggest and best trees are cut, those sure tobring the best prices on the market, andsmaller trees are taken later. Still, considerabledamage is being done to the habitat.“They come in and cut an area, it getsdried out, and then it’s vulnerable to fire,”Knott says. “Once it burns, and they convertit to rice fields, then it’s going to betotally gone. We’re at a point now wherethere’s been a lot of logging, but it’s been inpockets. If it was to stop now, [the forest]could … regenerate. It would take a while,but it would be okay.”Whether that can happen depends uponstricter controls being placed on the illegalloggers. Unfortunately, the most extensivelogging is being done in the lowland forestand the peat swamp, the areas where mostorangutans live. Some can survive in thelogged areas, but it is unclear whether thepopulations are large enough to be viable.AN UPHILL BATTLELocal corruption throws a major wrenchinto the battle for the rainforest. “We’vehad very little power to do much about it,and it’s very frustrating,” Laman says.“But the scale of corruption is so great,and the powers that are involved are sostrong that, as scientists, we feel we haveso little influence. We can only try to arguethe case with Indonesian scientific agenciesand parks departments. Changing thewhole culture of corruption is … reallygoing to be long-term.”“Since the fall of [President] Suharto,there has been a lot of decentralization. Alot more control has been given to theprovinces,” Knott says. “So, even thoughthe national government wants to stop it… it’s difficult because some of the localgovernment officials—the police, the military—areinvolved in illegal logging.”The loggers who were arrested back inthe winter of this year are still awaitingtrial, according to Knott. “They have to beHarvard University2GSAS
tried locally,” she says. “Whether or notthat’s going to happen, we’re waiting tosee.”Unfortunately, the rules of evidence arefoggy to say the least, Knott says.“According to the local police, if you findsomeone with a chainsaw in a nationalpark, you can’t arrest them for illegal loggingbecause someone else will say, ‘Howcan you prove he was there doing illegallogging?’” she says. “If you have a pictureof him cutting down a tree in the park,that’s not good enough evidence because,‘That picture could have been taken someplaceelse.’ And … a policeman or rangersaying, ‘I saw this person cutting down atree in a national park,’ isn’t consideredvalid testimony.”Orangutan poaching for food and forthe illegal pet trade, which has steadilyincreased in recent years, is also threateningthe ape population.“Most people [on Borneo] are Muslim,so they don’t eat orangutans,” Knott says.“But some of the Dyak people, the localindigenous people of that area, do eatorangutans. So some of the illegal loggerswill kill to sell the meat to the Dyaks. Andthey’ll kill mothers for their babies for theillegal pet trade.”Three years ago, Knott’s team set up atransit center for rescued baby orangutans.She estimates that they’ve brought in about25 infants who had been kidnapped.“When they’re infants, they want tocling to you like they’re little babies. Butonce they’re six-year-olds, what do you dowith them? They’re super strong. Theybite. So people don’t want them, they discardor abuse them, and we find them incages,” Knott says.The kidnappings are made even moredisturbing when one realizes that for everykidnapped orangutan baby, a motherorangutan was killed. And since femaleorangutans only reproduce about onceevery eight years, the death of even one hasa major negative impact on this diminishingspecies.A DISTINCTIVE SPECIESOrangutans are particularly susceptible toextinction. “They give birth so rarely;they’re not fast reproducers,” Knott says.“But they do seem to have quite high survivorship—theirbabies are not dying veryoften from natural causes.”Studying orangutans is very time-intensivecompared to many other animals.There are two reasons for this. One,orangutans have the longest intervalbetween births of any primate, includinghumans. Two, they’re solitary creatures.After mating, mother and baby go in onedirection while the now lone male goes inanother. This seemingly anti-social lifestylehas to do with the scarcity and wide dispersalof the orangutans’ food supply.They must travel, literally, far and wide tosecure food that is irregularly available.Knott has charted the lives of females,males, and juveniles to learn more aboutorangutan reproduction and the environ-continued on page 8ALUMNINOTESASTRONOMYMichael Zeilik, PhD ’75, professor ofphysics and astronomy at the Universityof New Mexico, is the 2003 recipient ofthe Excellence in Introductory CollegePhysics Teaching Award by the AmericanAssociation of Physics Teachers (AAPT).As recipient, Professor Zeilik presenteda lecture at the AAPT summer meeting.He received the Astronomy EducationPrize from the American AstronomicalSociety in 2002.COMPARATIVE LITERATUREEllen Peel, GSA ’76, announces thepublication of her book Politics,Persuasion, and Pragmatism: A Rhetoric ofFeminist Utopian Fiction (Ohio State,2002). She is a literature professor in theDepartments of Comparative and WorldLiterature and of English at San FranciscoState University.ENGLISH AND AMERICANLITERATURE AND LANGUAGEHeather Dubrow, PhD ’72,Tighe-Evansand John Bascom Professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison,writes that she has been awarded aNational Endowment for the HumanitiesFellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowshipfor a new book that reexamines theworkings of the early modern(Renaissance) lyric.GOVERNMENTAndrew Rudalevige, PhD ’00, receivedthe American Political Science Association’sRichard E. Neustadt Award for thebest book on the presidency published in2002, Managing the President’s Program:Presidential Leadership and Legislative PolicyFormulation (Princeton). He is an assistantprofessor of political science atDickinson College.HISTORYMary Beth Norton, PhD ’69, writesthat her most recent book, In the Devil’sSnare:The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692(Knopf), received the Ambassador BookAward by the English-Speaking Union asthe best book in American studies for2002.The scene after illegal loggers have degraded a section of the park.MATHEMATICSSolomon W. Golomb, PhD ’57,University Professor and Andrew andErna Viterbi Chair in Communications atthe University of Southern California,reports on a busy 2003. In April,Professor Golomb was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences. In May, hereceived a Distinguished Alumnus Awardfrom his (undergraduate) alma mater,Johns Hopkins University and waselected a fellow of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences. "I hadbeen elected a fellow of the AmericanColloquy 3 Fall 2003CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
Page 1 and 2: FALL 2003ColloquyALUMNI QUARTERLYTh
Page 3: from the deanBringing TogetherOur G
Page 7 and 8: Tuskegee study until the research w
Page 9 and 10: In a Conversation Book of 1820,[Bee
Page 11 and 12: A “prime” male orangutan (left)
Page 13: Human Subjects / Humane Researchcon
Page 16 and 17: ALUMNI BOOKSThe Hanging of EphraimW
Page 18 and 19: The Ninth Symphonycontinued from pa
Page 20: ColloquyALUMNI QUARTERLYAlumniFacul

Saving Gunung Palung: A Rainforest Marriage - Cheryl Knott

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?