00:06:58.040We opened the cage door, and the infant climbed out of the cage, and sure enough, his sister came down the trunk of the tree where she had been in, picked up the infant, her younger brother, and climbed up in the canopy with him and moved away.
00:07:14.500And then shortly after we released the mother, the mother followed.
00:07:18.560She was a little bit more vocal upon her release.
00:07:22.240She kiss-squeaked and threw a couple of branches to show us what she had thought of us in her short captivity.
00:07:30.740And then she followed her daughter and her son up to the trees and followed them.
00:07:39.740And we had assistants follow to see what would occur.
00:07:43.720And some distance later, sometime later, the mother came to her daughter and took her baby from her daughter and proceeded to carry him.
00:07:57.460So, this whole scenario of sibling devotion was quite surprising to me because I never really expected it among the solitary or semi-solitary orangutans.
00:08:12.420But clearly, the relationship between the mother, the baby, and her older daughter was very similar to what it would be in humans, in most cultures.
00:08:22.860So, you know, it's things like that that I have seen over the years that have very much, not shaken me, but convinced me that orangutans really are not all that different from us humans.
00:08:41.500They are great apes, even though they are semi-solitary in the wild.
00:08:46.300And it's their ecology that enforces the semi-solitarianism because of the way that their food, which is mainly fruit, is distributed in the tropical rainforest.
00:09:01.460I love hearing stories from the field.
00:09:04.800It really just allows me to have such visuals and really feel connected to these more-than-human kin that I know are really suffering right now.
00:09:18.660And orangutans are just incredibly smart beings, but the scale at which humans wreak havoc is so grand that it's often difficult for our animal kin to adapt to the pace of our destruction.
00:09:32.100So I'm wondering how has the situation facing wild orangutans changed since you first began your work in Borneo?
00:09:40.720Well, the situation facing wild orangutans is very dire.
00:09:44.920As the forests are annihilated, orangutans are left homeless.1.00
00:09:50.880They're refugees in their own land.0.87
00:09:53.480The canopy where they find most of their fruit and where they live is demolished.1.00
00:11:28.400I mean, it's a dreadful, dreadful situation.
00:11:31.440There are orangutans that die of starvation.
00:11:34.020In fact, this year we found a dead orangutan, an adult male, floating in the river inside the national park.
00:11:40.940And, of course, everybody was very concerned because people thought, well, maybe he'd been killed by people.
00:11:47.000You know, but it is the middle of a national park.
00:11:48.800And then when our veterinarians at our orangutan care center in quarantine did an autopsy,
00:11:56.440they discovered that what had happened is he had died of starvation he died of famine and they found
00:12:02.900his stomach full of the inner parts of raso of raso plants and so what had happened the vet
00:12:12.800explained to me that uh he hadn't eaten anything for a while and then he stuffed his stomach full
00:12:19.320of this fibrous material and ended up dead and the explanation was something like this that
00:12:25.880When American and I think also Russian troops freed the prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp,
00:12:34.700the prisoners were immediately fed, and they ate very heartily,
00:12:41.180and some of them actually died from those first meals.
00:12:45.580And, you know, their stomachs were overstuffed or whatever.
00:12:48.540And so this orangutan had died from something similar, that he had been hungry, he had been famished,
00:12:53.380He got to the edge of the river, edge of the river he found these raso plants, palms, and he pulled out the inner stalks, and he stuffed himself, and then he ended up dead.
00:13:04.380There was just a stomach full of these unprocessed plant fibers.
00:13:11.820So, you know, wild orangutans are dying of starvation, even in the middle of the national park.
00:14:08.280And so the orangutans in that particular area of the National Park, aside from being killed while the illegal logging was going on, were faced with starvation.
00:14:17.820and many of them, of course, moved up into the northern part of the park
00:14:24.000and outside the park, but the park is a peninsula that juts out into the Java Sea,
00:14:29.700so it was difficult for some of them to move, especially females
00:14:33.820who tend to stay in the areas where they were born, where their mothers lived.
00:14:38.880So, anyways, if this is happening in a national park,
00:14:43.000imagine what's happening outside of national parks and other protected areas.
00:14:47.820The orangutan population has been decimated, decimated.
00:14:52.660And there are indications that maybe 80% of all wild orangutans are gone.
00:15:00.880And this has happened over the last few decades.
00:16:32.860Wild orangutans can live into their 60s.
00:16:37.360And so what I envision in the future is you will have lone adult male orangutans giving out their long calls and not hearing any answer.
00:16:50.240And that's because they would be the last ones left.
00:16:52.700And there's a possibility, it's just a possibility, that there will be individuals, old males, roaming the central mountains of Borneo, who will actually have outlived their species.
00:19:10.600And, of course, how could they come? Because there was only one flight a week, and that was Saturday morning, to Pangalambun, which is where Tanjung Puting Reserve, now National Park, is located.
00:19:24.420so the tourism finally really began we pushed it i mean i've been lecturing all over north america
00:19:33.280even a bit in europe and japan to push the idea that if you want to save the great apes
00:19:39.540one of the things that you can do you know whether it's gorillas or chimpanzees or bonobos
00:19:44.380what have you or orangutans is you can go there you can go to the habitat countries
00:19:49.480you can vote with your feet and you can vote with your dollars or your euros
00:19:54.660So I know what my job as a tourist is.
00:19:57.800I mean, I brought back all kinds of carvings from Rwanda and Uganda
00:20:05.280when I visited the mountain gorillas there a number of years ago.
00:20:10.640So tourism is something that's really important,
00:20:13.640and it's something that has helped staunch the annihilation of certainly mountain gorillas
00:20:51.340So it also fosters a kind of pride and making money off tourism, off the existence of wild orangutans and wild-born ex-captive orangutans also in the area becomes a prestige factor.
00:21:09.120I mean, nobody is going to visit Kota Warang in Barat, which is our regency or our province, central Indonesian Borneo, to see palm oil plantations.
00:21:18.300I mean, they can go anywhere to see them, but they are coming to visit Orangu Towns.
00:21:23.020You know, the future of Orangu Towns is bleak, but there is hope.
00:21:28.280And that's why I continue working, because as long as there's hope, we can't stop.
00:21:37.420I'm with you in that we have to keep going even when things look bleak.
00:21:41.680And I think the tourism industry is an interesting one because in many ways I see the benefits of money coming into the community, basically money to keep conservation going because they can make money off of life itself.
00:21:58.220And really what I've so much been learning, which I really wish wasn't the case, is that so much comes down to economics.
00:22:07.200As much as I wish it didn't, money still really matters.
00:22:10.920And it's really incredible to just see how it infiltrates every level of people's life ways.
00:22:18.240And so I can understand that the tourism allows for local community members to really see that the orangutans are more valuable left alive and that people value them and travel to see them.
00:22:32.960I've also seen tourism really disrupt places.
00:22:38.320And this is one of the things that we've made a very strong effort to do is control it.
00:22:44.240And so we've been fortunate that we've been able to work as a national park and the local government to control it somewhat, because the local government wants tens of thousands of tourists roaming the national park.
00:22:57.080and we have really insisted that it be controlled that you know people can't just
00:23:04.160walk into Camp Leakey and you know and walk around and hike unescorted by local guides
00:23:11.860but there's a time period where they can come in they have to go to the feedings
00:23:15.840and basically you know no place else they can't interact with orangutans you know sometimes these
00:23:22.700interactions occur because orangutans have their own minds about things but generally it has to
00:23:28.860be controlled because you don't want massive amounts of people massive numbers to go into
00:23:34.780a national park and destroy it so we have worked very hard to make sure that we have you know what
00:23:44.720some people call ethical tourism or controlled tourism in the park so it benefits both the
00:23:51.940orangutans and the local community and one of the ways that it has benefited the local community
00:23:57.780is that there are hundreds of young men and even young women who are now employed as guides
00:24:05.640and these young men maybe 20 years ago would have been illegal loggers because there would
00:24:14.100not have been that much employment or now they would work for palm oil concessions palm oil
00:24:20.120plantations. So we've provided diversification in the economy, and there's no way that tourism
00:24:27.800is going to replace the palm oil plantations. You know, I estimate that the tourism in Tanjimputing
00:24:35.140probably brings in, you know, maybe a million or two million dollars a year to the local economy,
00:24:41.600but I was horrified a few years ago to hear that the largest palm oil company in the area
00:24:49.760pays 90 million dollars a year in taxes in taxes alone so you can imagine what kind of
00:24:59.260money they're paying to their employees and how much they're paying into the local economy but
00:25:06.720still it's a diversification that allows people to have pride and prestige in what they do and
00:25:14.960And many of our own staff who work for OFI in conservation and rehabilitation and research have been tempted by local palm oil plantations to leave and work for them.
00:25:29.460And in fact, one of our staff made the comment that OFI employees are sexy.
00:25:39.320And I thought it was a very strange comment, but what it means is they're sexy and that people want them.
00:25:44.960People want them as employees because they're seen as being professional, they're seen as being devoted and hardworking, and much of it has to do with the fact that they're working for a cause as well as working for a profession or a job.
00:26:01.780So I totally agree that tourism has to be controlled, and that is one of the problems of the future, and that's a problem that we're going to have to deal with.
00:26:10.800But we do the best we can. And when I was in Rwanda and Uganda, I was actually very impressed by the way that those countries were handling the mountain guerrilla tourism and the fact that they were able to derive considerable income from it.0.91
00:26:31.260yeah very complex issues and i appreciate you talking them through with me and i'm wondering
00:26:39.780about the national parks and wondering what role or what are the roles of the national parks and
00:26:47.020reserves in terms of combating their possible extinction you know at the same time what are
00:26:52.920the risks when we propose the designation of national parks and reserves as sole solutions
00:26:58.000You know, are we empowering the mass development and extraction of all land outside these boundaries, but just protecting really islands of ecosystems?
00:27:09.360Oh, absolutely. Protecting enclaves. And also when you establish new national parks, you have the problem of the local indigenous people who are often excluded or evicted or, you know, pushed out of these national parks.
00:27:27.700So this is a problem that we are very concerned with, and we're very fortunate, because Tanjungputing National Park was actually established as a reserve in the 1930s, and there were no indigenous people as such.
00:27:46.140There were no permanent Dayak settlements.1.00
00:27:49.900The Dayaks are the Aboriginal or Indigenous people of Borneo.
00:27:53.640The Dayaks did come in and have temporary settlements, but there were no villages.
00:28:01.140And the only villages that existed before the Second World War, after which, of course, Indonesia declared independence in 1945,0.87
00:28:09.840were several Malayu villages that were right on the seacoast.
00:28:16.140And so what happened when the reserve was changed to, the status of the reserve was changed to National Park is those villages of which there were two in particular were enclaved, so they were excluded from the National Park.
00:28:36.640And there have been problems because sometimes they're a source of these villages.
00:28:44.720People find a living by poaching sea turtles, sometimes by even killing orangutans,0.99
00:28:53.180although they're Malayu communities, they're Muslim communities,
00:28:58.400which means that they're really not into hunting wild pigs.0.99
00:29:03.220And they're not into hunting so much as the traditionally indigenous people such as the Dayaks are.1.00
00:31:44.760in the province of Kalimantantanga the orangutan capital of the world
00:31:48.600because most of the wild orangutans of the world are actually
00:31:52.400found in our province it's remarkable but it's true and part of that had to do with the fact
00:31:58.240that our province was developed much later in terms of you know industrial tree planting
00:32:05.620in terms of palm oil plantations and other provinces in indonesia not still logging
00:32:11.780concessions so we're fortunate there but you have to work on your luck you can't just let it slide
00:32:20.320So that's what we've been trying to do, and I'm fairly confident that at least in the near future, the wild orangutan population of Tanjaputin, which as I mentioned, is one of the two largest wild populations in the world at 6,000 individuals, will survive.
00:36:35.680It took 10 months' negotiation, but we were able to persuade this company to adopt zero-tolerance policy on the killing, capturing, and harming of all endangered wildlife, including orangutans.
00:36:53.240And only after they enacted the zero-tolerance policy would we actually negotiate with them and work with them.
00:37:00.280And the first thing that they asked us to do, and which we were very happy to do, was to explain to their managers, to instruct and train their managers on how to interpret this policy.
00:37:12.680In other words, we were training the trainers, because then these managers could train the manual workers and laborers in their plantations on how to interpret this policy.
00:37:22.220And basically, this policy is you don't, exactly what I said, you can't kill, you can't capture, you can't harm any endangered animal.
00:37:32.320And what do you do in the case of orangutans if they're, you know, destroying your newly planted oil palms?
00:37:39.860Well, you call an organization such as ourselves, OFI, to capture the orangutan and move him or her to a safe, secure forest, or you call the Indonesian Forestry Department as well to let them know that there's an orangutan in danger and who has to be removed.
00:37:59.800And usually and often they will call us, an organism of OFI, to do this.
00:38:06.140So, you know, we do have to work with the palm oil companies.
00:38:13.460And we were very happy to see that this company also now has a zero tolerance policy for further deforestation.
00:38:23.240And so now they will only, they claim, they will only expand into areas that do not have high-value conservation forests.
00:38:34.880Now, of course, you know, it's an argument about what is a high-conservation-value forest.
00:38:40.260And we, OFI, would say, well, it's virtually any forest that has wildlife.
00:38:46.460And they would say, no, you know, secondary forest is not high-value conservation forest.
00:38:51.400So, you know, there's still all kinds of questions and issues and problems, but at least there's been a start.
00:38:58.800And what has made it possible is the fact that the outside world is now putting pressure on the palm oil companies to behave.
00:39:07.860And without this pressure, without people talking about boycotts, without people raising the issue within Indonesia, Malaysia, but primarily the outside world where most of the palm oil is consumed, there wouldn't be this interest or this focus now on trying to improve the way that palm oil is farmed in Indonesia and Malaysia,
00:39:35.840which are, of course, the two major palm oil exporting countries in the world
00:42:25.280And so much of the Pamoa plantations are established on indigenous lands where the communities impacted have little chance of defending the land from corporate interests.
00:42:37.940And then how you were talking about to add insult to injury, many of these indigenous people who are now kicked off their land, their land destroyed, they're then coerced to work in these plantations that have slaughtered their life ways and taken their land.
00:42:53.060And so the, that's just the historical systemic disenfranchisement of the forest dwelling people and the forest dwelling more than human people with this corporate land theft is just, I know of, I don't personally know them.
00:43:11.260But I know of them of Malayu farmers who refused to leave their small land holdings and, you know, fought against the palm oil.
00:43:22.220Actually, it was local palm oil companies that tried to move them off their land, and they ended up in jail.
00:43:30.160and now the son of one of the leaders of this sort of movement locally
00:43:37.660was arrested because they claimed that he had killed an orangutan
00:43:42.660that was found murdered on the edge of a palm oil plantation
00:43:50.600because this entered the national media in Indonesia
00:43:54.680it's a major problem and it's a political problem
00:43:58.460as much as an economic problem and until the politicians do something it's not going to change
00:44:06.260and uh you know unfortunately i'm not an economist but it seems that whatever system we have an
00:44:14.240economic system we have in place now doesn't really work for the uh for the local person
00:44:20.640it doesn't work for life itself doesn't work for life itself no the economic model we're living
00:44:26.700under doesn't work for life itself this corporate capitalistic model it's brutal it's brutal it it
00:44:32.640makes money off killing life off extracting life poisoning life i mean the mining industry alone
00:44:40.160it's a 90 waste industry all the wastewater what do you do with that for eternity i mean it's
00:44:46.020it's madness and i think just hearing the details from you about the orangutans the other wildlife
00:44:54.460the indigenous peoples the corporate land grabs the political just debauchery is it's a complex
00:45:01.540and also common story these days under this economic model and it's uh you know just to
00:45:08.300think that 90 percent of lowland rainforest in borneo are gone 90 percent you know these numbers
00:45:16.340are huge and you know getting i want to ask you another question about the economic complexity
00:45:24.380You know, I've been thinking that around 85% of all produced and exported palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia.
00:45:32.180And so that makes them the largest producers of palm oil.
00:45:35.100But they're also the only countries where wild orangutan still exist.
00:45:39.620So I'm wondering what are the complexities of this dominating industry that has become embedded in the politicized move to raise the nation's, quote, standard of living.
00:45:50.100seeing as over 25 million people live off the palm oil cultivation in indonesia alone so you know
00:45:57.660it's it adds another level of complexity because palm oil production and extraction is being sold
00:46:04.960to the local people as a way to raise their standard of living and and i guess in some ways
00:46:11.940perhaps it has but you know how do you how do you deal with uh that that bottleneck it's very
00:46:20.120difficult and so one of the ways that we've dealt with it is uh like i said is trying to manage
00:46:27.280trying to bring tourism into the area and trying to manage it trying to control it and uh certainly
00:46:33.980one of the things that impressed me and has surprised me is that in our area it's the
00:46:40.040locals who control the tourism you can go to other places and like komodo and it's not the
00:46:45.500locals it's people who come migrants from other areas of indonesia and even foreigners who come
00:46:50.740and control the tourism industry but in our area it's the local people and people from kumai
00:46:56.760particularly which is the closest town nearest to tanjumputing national park where we are
00:47:02.700Or on the other side, on the eastern side of the national park, the tourism yet hasn't arisen, which in a way is good because the orangutans there are not, wild orangutan populations there are not yet affected by tourism.
00:47:18.060But, you know, in the end, what do you want?
00:47:22.360Do you want a dead orangutan with no forest or do you want an orangutan that's still living in the trees but has to occasionally, you know, suffer the indignities of being an object of tourism?
00:47:35.440If I personally went to orangutan, I would choose to be able to live.
00:47:44.700what you can do is you can give the forest to the local indigenous people to have them manage it
00:47:51.360i mean that's basically the only thing that i can see immediately directly because when local people0.98
00:47:58.620manage the forest especially the indigenous not always and some are as rapacious as you know as
00:48:05.780as corporate uh as corporations but often uh they make decisions that are beneficial to both
00:48:13.820conservation of the forest and themselves in terms of the small landholding farms that
00:48:22.800they might establish and the extraction industries that they may establish from the forest, things
00:48:29.440like collecting raton or even wild rubber from the forest.
00:48:34.920These are extractive industries, but they're not industries that destroy the forest.
00:48:39.180And so even though one of the first steps that happened when a national park came into being was that some of these extractive industries were stopped, local extractive industries were stopped, they were replaced with tourism.
00:48:56.960And, of course, what we're talking about here in our area is very low population densities of people, very small towns, small villages.
00:49:09.240I mean, some of the towns in our province, Kalimantantenga, would be classified as small villages in Java, which is one of the most populous places in the world in terms of population density.
00:49:21.940So, you know, it's a very hard question. And basically, what we would like is an overhaul of the whole economic system, but an economic system that is equitable. And the problem is that it's very difficult to do that.
00:51:00.980It's not cheap. I mean, we actually this year bought a 15-hectare palm oil plantation, and it was quite expensive by local standards.
00:51:14.980Actually, I mean, it may not have been that expensive buying land in Southern California, near Los Angeles, but it certainly was expensive locally, and it strained our resources.
00:51:26.420and so our goal is to turn this 15 hectare palm oil plantation
00:52:25.540When you consider the small amounts of money relative to big corporations that any conservation organization has, especially small ones like us,
00:52:37.020it's amazing what we've been able to do to help orangutan population survive.
00:52:44.540But when you're facing billions and billions of dollars in profit, and you have a measly million, if you're lucky, or two, what are you going to do?