In an effort to deal with encroachment into national parks Indonesia is trying a new policy

Many of the Indonesian forest reserves, have become paper parks, with much or most of the forestation and other vegetation lost. They clear land in the hope that they will eventually be given the title to the land to make their seizures legal.

Under their new program “conservation partnership”, the settlers acknowledge that they cannot claim the land, and they have to help restore the land to how it was before they damaged it. The are then allowed to remain on the land and cultivate traditional crops and harvest non timber products like rattan and honey – but importantly, not palm oil.

This model has grown, and now 177,000 hectares is under this form of management (about 700 square miles.

It continues to be a hard balance between the protection of the forest, and allowing the people who live in these areas (both native, and those who move from elsewhere), to be able to better their lives through work. If work exists that both benefits them and the ecosystem then this is likely to succeed.

Species watch

Species watch

All species are important, often reintroductions have failed because a small unnoticed animal was missed. Over time, we will amass pages for as many species as possible. However, just as important is  seeing how species are closely related. As such as well as looking at species from a specific ecosystem or family, we will also include family trees of many of the families on earth. It should be noted, that this is to help you find wildlife you wish to see, so will never link to every species. In either way, these links to these will be placed at the top.

Original paper - OrthoMaM: A database of orthologous genomic markers for placental mammal phylogenetics. Ranwez V., Delsuc F., Ranwez S., Belkhir K., Tilak M. & Douzery E. J. P. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2007, 7 : 241.

An arrested Sumatran politician – arrested for bribery, was found to have a pet Orangutan among a group of other exotic pets

There is a great deal of corruption in many parts of the world. In many places politicians are almost expected to give themselves extra benefits – indeed those who do not, are often quite notable for standing out.

In this case, after arresting the politician his house was raided, when the animals were found.

Keeping wild animals as pets can carry a 5 year jail sentence, in this case it must -he must not escape penalty for this

Continue reading “An arrested Sumatran politician – arrested for bribery, was found to have a pet Orangutan among a group of other exotic pets”

The Tapanuli Orangutan is still threatened with extinction, despite only recently being discovered

The Tapanuli Orangutan lives on Sumatra but are thought to be more closely related to Bornean Orangutans. Numbering around 800 members, they had a far wider ranging habitat until recently. They are now restricted to about 1000 square km – about 2.5% of their former range.

While looking very similar to other orangutans, this sub species has not interbred with any other orangutans for over 1 million years and despite living in Sumatra, are more closely related to the Borneo Orangutan

What is harder, is that these Orangutans are not naturally mountainous animals, but have been driven there by the hunting that has so decimated their numbers.

Continue reading “The Tapanuli Orangutan is still threatened with extinction, despite only recently being discovered”

Dam that threatens the survival all of the rarest great ape is in the wrong place will make more carbon dioxide emissions during building and reduce emissions less than claimed

A recent analysis has shown that the the Dam that would cover 90% of the Tapanuli orangutan population has had the prospects of positive outcomes hugely hyped by it’s backers, and minimising negative facts about the Dam have been buried.

The region is already well connected to the grid with almost all Communities already served. Due to the astounding amount of Forest that would be lost if this damn were to be created, if it were to ever reduce carbon emissions it would take many decades if not centuries for the carbon cost of the dam to be offset by the electricity it creates. Given that in order to stop catastrophic climate change we need to be cutting carbon emissions now it will not help in this fight whatsoever.

Continue reading “Dam that threatens the survival all of the rarest great ape is in the wrong place will make more carbon dioxide emissions during building and reduce emissions less than claimed”

New species of Orangutan

The Tapamuli Orangutan has recently been discovered. There are only thought to be 800 of these animals left and they are only found within the Batang Toru Forest of North Sumatra. It is thought that they have been a separate from the Borneon Orangutan for 674,000 years (despite living on Sumatra they appear to be more closely related to the Orangutans of Borneo than of Sumatra). As well as having such a tiny population they also live in an area of roughly 1000 square kilometres (386 square miles). This is the first great ape species to be discovered since 1929 when the Bonobo was discovered.

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