Orangutan Adventures in Tanjung Puting

Today makes the start of Orangutan Foundation UK’s #orangutancaringweek, so over the next 7 days I thought I’d share some info about these wonderful creatures and some picture from my recent wildlife photography trip to see them in their native Borneo.

Along with gorillas, chimpanzees and of course humans, orangutans are part of the taxonomic family of primates known as great apes. There are three species of orangutan - the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) and the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), which was only identified as a separate species in 2017.

Fossil evidence suggests that during the Pleistocene era, from around 1.8 million years to 11,500 years ago, orangutans lived throughout much of Southeast Asia, from Java in the south, up into Laos and southern China. Today, wild orangutans are found only in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.

The orangutan’s preferred habitat is low-lying peat-swamp forest. Their distribution is influenced by fruit availability and they are rarely found above 500m. One such area, the reserve that I visited, is Tanjung Puting. This sits on a peninsula that juts out into the Java Sea. It is a complex mosaic of diverse lowland habitats – over 3000 km2 of tall tropical rain forest and seasonally inundated peat swamp forest. The tropical heath forest - called “kerangas” in parts of Borneo - is only found on very poor, typically white-sandy soils and is characterized by medium-sized trees. Much of the reserve is impenetrable – boat is the most common form of transport, providing access along the wide Sekonyer river and its smaller blackwater tributaries. Rickety wooden boardwalks allow access into the rainforest itself.

The Tanjung Puting reserve is home to a host of species including proboscis monkey, clouded leopards, civets, sun bears; over 230 species of birds including hornbills, kingfisher and white egrets; crocodiles, snakes, lizards and frogs. The area is a hothouse of biodiversity, with diverse habitat zones providing a variety of microhabitats that shelter slightly different fauna and flora.

However, the iconic orangutans are undoubtably the best known species in the area. Field studies of orangutans were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in the early 1970s, who established a research station in Tanjung Puting called Camp Leakey. This was named after the legendary paleo-anthropologist, Louis Leakey, who was both mentor and an inspiration to Dr Galdikas as well as Drs Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, who studied chimpanzees and gorillas respectively. I became slightly obsessed with Leakey’s work on human evolution in my younger years and it was humbling to visit this historic site, which has been the cornerstone of primatology and ecological research for decades.

Over the next week, I’ll share more about orangutans and my experiences in Borneo.
To learn more about orangutans, visit
https://www.orangutan.org.uk/orangutans

#orangutans #redape