With some
10,000 orangutans having died a premature death in the past five years, there
clearly has been collective failure by governmental and non-governmental
organizations to implement effective conservation management for
these species.
Sumatran orangutans have been
Critically Endangered for a while, indicating severe population declines in the
recent past and projecting similar declines in the near future.
Bornean
orangutans were slightly better off, so we thought. But based on the first
robust population trend analysis, recently conducted for Sabah, Malaysian
Borneo, indicating a 25 percent decline in 10 years, this species is also
likely to be listed as Critically Endangered.
The facts
speak for themselves. Based on extensive community
interviews, some 1,500-2,200 orangutans are killed in Kalimantan
annually. We further estimate that we are losing some 3,000-6,000 square
kilometers of habitat every year on Borneo, and this similarly translates
in the loss of several thousand animals. These dead orangutans are real, not
the fiction of some science crackpots!
The
Indonesian government officially concurs with the above findings and thus
recognizes that there has been little if any progress on its own goal of
stabilizing all wild orangutan populations by 2017. Last year's Laporan Kinerja of
the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA),
the Indonesian conservation authority, indicates that in the nine sites where
the government is monitoring Bornean orangutans, there have been average
population declines of 26.5 percent and 28.2 percent in 2013 and 2014
respectively. If accurate, this indicates the orangutans are miles away from
population stability, and rapidly heading towards extinction.
How is it
possible that after nearly five decades of hard conservation action we are
still largely failing to achieve results? Let me summarize a few reasons.
First, with
more than 75 percent of orangutans living outside protected areas where
forest is rapidly being converted to non-forest, orangutan conservation is
obviously challenging.
Second,
there is a lack of funding. In a recent report I calculated that the total
allocated funding for orangutan conservation in Kalimantan was about $20
million. Half of this was through government budgets for protected areas,
provincial conservation agencies, and national-level coordination, and the
remainder came from the NGO sector. About $5 million is spent by NGOs in
Kalimantan on activities related to orangutan rescue, rehabilitation and
reintroduction, and the remainder on habitat protection and law enforcement.
That is a
lot of money, but it is nowhere near enough. In a recent study, we
estimated the costs of managing orangutans in Kalimantan’s protected areas at
$387 per square kilometer per year, and the costs of managing orangutans in
timber concessions at $1,686 per square kilometer per year. This calculation
indicates that annual budget requirements for effectively managing orangutans
in Kalimantan are about $65 million. This does not yet include the costs of
managing orangutan populations in pulp and paper and oil-palm concessions, or
in community-managed areas. With an annual budget for habitat management of
about $14 million available, there is an obvious funding shortfall of at least
$50 million, but probably more like $100 million if we include orangutans in
plantation areas.
In simple
words this means that we should either significantly increase the amount of
funding available for orangutan conservation, for example, by explicitly giving
the private and local community sectors roles in managing orangutan populations
and getting them to fund it. Or we employ a triage approach, and officially
give up on those populations that we cannot realistically save.
But a lack
of funding is not the full story. How the available funds are spent is probably
much more important. For example, it is highly likely that only a small part of
the officially allocated government budgets for protected areas is actually
spent on threat management. In my experience most funds are used for salaries,
infrastructure, cars, workshops etc., with few operational funds remaining.
At least a
quarter, but probably more likely about half the total funds actually spent on
(not just allocated to) orangutan conservation goes to rescues, rehabilitation,
and reintroduction. This achieves a lot of public and media attention, and
keeps the plight of the orangutan firmly in the global view. With an average cost per
successfully released orangutan of $44,121, however, this is a
highly cost-ineffective strategy compared to spending the same funds on the
protection or sustainable management of orangutan habitat (and the important
forest ecosystem services that these habitats deliver).
Given the
challenges and lack of capacity and funds to address them, a logical and
pragmatic approach would be to steer the limited resources toward those areas
and strategies where they can have the biggest impact.
We can blame
many for their failures to effectively protect orangutans: the government for
rarely enforcing conservation laws, and giving out forest conversion licenses
left, right and center while entirely ignoring that protected species occur;
the plantation sector for happily converting forests into non-forest largely
disregarding the presence of orangutans, or killing them if needed; or the
local community sector which has also played a major role in converting forest
to agriculture land and is another important factor in orangutan deaths.
But
ultimately there is only one group of people that can initiate change for the
better, and that is us, the orangutan conservation community, the people on the
ground, the donors, the scientists, and all others who have made it their
business to save species like the orangutan. We need to stand up as a united
front, coordinate among ourselves and with other stakeholders, and present all
other relevant stakeholders with a clear plan of action. What to do next so
that the limited funds are spent on actions with the biggest benefit for
orangutans?
Indonesia
has a national action plan for orangutan conservation for 2007 to 2017,
developed through the USAID-funded Orangutan Conservation Services Program. By
next year, we need a new plan. And that plan needs to show who will do what,
where, when, with which funds, and targeting which outcomes. This will require
a level of strategic planning, transparent reporting and accountability not yet
encountered in orangutan conservation.
As long as
we all stay comfortable in our well-meaning but poorly strategized and
coordinated actions, we will never stop the rot in orangutan conservation. As a
community, we urgently need to step up our internal collaboration in Indonesia,
and engage better with government and the business sector. This needs to create
policies and actions that will finally start saving some orangutans and the
important forests in which they live.
Erik Meijaard
coordinates the Borneo Futures initiative
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