Sumatran orangutans and the World War II.

Abstract

This April and May, I was in Sumatra to carry out a short field survey of wild Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii). Setting out fromMedan, the fourth largest city in Indonesia, I visited orangutan field sites in the Province of North Sumatra. Asmany of youmay already know, theword ‘orangutan’ is made up of two separate words. In the local languages of Malay and Indonesian, ‘‘Orang’’ means ‘‘people’’ or ‘‘person’’. ‘‘Hutan’’ means ‘‘forest’’. So ‘‘Orang Hutan’’ becomes orangutan. Orangutan means ‘man of the forest’. Orangutans can now be found only on Sumatra and Borneo. These islands are enormous. Sumatra is the world’s sixth largest island,with an area (473,000 square km) greater than the US state of California that is greater than Japan that is slightly greater than Germany. I have been visiting Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus morio), in Danum Valley, Sabah, Borneo, since 1999, and so I am familiarwith this species.On this recent trip, Iwas keen to seewildSumatran orangutans for the first time in their natural habitat. Prof. Mashhor Mansor of the University of Science, Malaysia (USM), an old friend of mine, kindly introduced me to some talented Indonesian scholars. One of his former students, Dr. Onrizal of North Sumatra University, was my host. I was accompanied by a Kyoto University graduate student, who has been studying Bornean orangutans, in Danum valley for the past three years, and a young Assistant Professor who investigates hormones and behavior in captive zoo-housed orangutans. Together, the five of us toured the northern region of Sumatra. There are around 6600 orangutans in Sumatra, according to recent estimates. Sumatran orangutans have been studied mainly in the Province of Aceh, in the northern of Sumatra. Field research on Sumatra has been conducted by my good friends Prof. Carel van Schaik, Dr. Sri Suci Utami Atmoko, Dr. Ian Singleton, Dr. Serge Wich, and their colleagues and students. The Province of Aceh brings to mind the strong earthquake, and subsequent tsunami offshore Northern Sumatra, in 2004. More than 230,000 people are known to have died or are still missing in the wake of this natural disaster. A further challenge was the conflict between the Province of Aceh and the Central Government of Indonesia over natural resources, such as oil. This means, there were security problems related to carrying out fieldwork in Aceh. It was very difficult to get the required permission from the Adult female Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser National Park (photo credit: T. Matsuzawa)