Borneo is one of the top five places on earth where wildlife is most endangered. One area seriously threatened is the Sebangau peat swamp forest in Kalimantan where the world's largest population of orangutans is dwindling fast.

Anne Blair Gould - A Boat Trip through Borneo

Ten years ago there were 15,000 orangutans; now there are only 7,000. Illegal logging robs them of their home; illegal pet trading robs the young orangs of their mothers. And the worst thing is, these are not even the greatest threats right now. What's really going to put paid to the peat forest of Sebangau is a vast network of canals that's draining the whole swampy area.

Peatland drying out
"These canals were dug by illegal loggers to float the logs out to the larger rivers bordering this area," explains Helen Morrogh-Bernard who is studying orangutan ecology and behaviour in Sebangau. The net result of all these canals is that the peat swamp forest has been drying out.
 
"As the canals drain the area, the peat dries out, the trees fall over and forest fires start more easily," adds Simon Husson, who like Helen Morrogh-Bernard works for CIMTROP (Centre for International Co-operation in Management of Tropical Peatland) and studies Sebangau's orangutans. "It's the biggest single problem we have here," Simon continues.

"Because the canals are draining this peatland, we get very extended dry seasons where the water-table can be one-and-a-half metres below the surface, whereas it use to be only 30 centimetres."

Thanks to much work on the part of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Sebangau was declared a National Park in October 2004, and environmentalists are hopeful that this will at least reduce if not stop illegal logging.

Orphan orangutans
In other part of this same forest, we find the Nyara Menteng rehabilitation centre for orphaned orangutans. This is the second centre built by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by Dutchman Willie Smits. The first, 'Wanariset Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre,' built in 1991, is in East Kalimantan.

Communications officer, Jo-Lan van Leeuwen, explains what the BOS Foundation is trying to do:

"All the little orangutans here have been orphaned when hunters shot there mother in order to capture the baby for the illegal pet trade. Baby orangs usually stay with their mother for the first seven or eight years and they learn how to find fruits and how to make nests from their mothers. So here we provide them with human 'surrogate mothers' who take the little orang-utans into the forest every day and try and them teach them the skills they need."
 
Orangutan exams
They will eventually need these skills as the BOS Foundation plans to reintroduce as many of the 300 or so young apes back into the wild as possible. But first each orangutan has to pass its exams.
 
"Not far from the centre we have three islands where we bring our orang-utans when we think that they might have the right character and the necessary skills to make it on their own,” says van Leeuwen.

“Here on these islands we observe them closely to see if they make the grade - and if they pass the test, then we will release them into a protected area where there really will be on their own - although we will still be observing them."

A Boat Trip through Borneo was produced by Anne Blair Gould. The programme was originally broadcast in May 2005.