Peat Swamp Forest, a forest type commonly found in Tanjung Puting

2006 was an Eli Nino year and there was an extensive drought that lasted for several months. Usually, the height of the dry season comes at mid to late August. In 2006 the drought lasted well into November. 15% of the National Park burned. However, some of the fires took place in secondary forests, small woodland and open areas. Thus, much of that 15% did not represent primary rainforest. Sadly, some virgin forest on the northeastern side of the park was burned by fires which spread from palm oil plantations that were being expanded at the time.

These fires were horrific. OFI fought them tooth and nail. Over 60 OFI staff and rangers from the Care Center and other OFI facilitates fought non-stop for over 6 weeks to stop these fires. On the western side of the park OFI staff, working with Park Rangers and concerned members of the community, cut a slash line 11 km long to prevent the fires from jumping to the dry ground forest above at a place where there was an escarpment separating the deep coastal swamps from the dry forest. This line succeeded in keeping the fire out of the dry ground forest. Once into the dry forest, the fire would have been unstoppable.

The coastal swamps are hellish. They are infused with brackish water, and smell of brine and decay from rotting vegetation. Thorns cover many of the plants. There is no place to put your feet. With every step you sink knee deep into the odious, foul smelling mud. But this coastal swamp is a repository of enormous biodiversity and probably holds species that are still unknown to science (because nobody wants to go there). The swamps are also home to clouds of biting mosquitoes that show no mercy.

Unfortunately, some large areas of the coastal swamps burned in 2006. The good news is that almost five years later there has been some recovery. A few resilient trees survived the fires, some with even a few branches intact. The roots of others survived and sent out shoots which re-incarnated the parent trees. Verdant vegetation now covers the ground. The ash and charcoal are not so much visible on the swamp floor.

In 2009 El Nino came again and the forests burned. OFI fought the fires. Fortunately, this time the damage to the Park was not as great as in 2006.

But the best news has been that during the last year and a half (since my last blog), the rains have been pummeling the forests so much that there barely was a dry season. The forest needs no relief from the rain! In May, sometimes the rain begins to let up as if anticipating the dry season that normally begins in June and July. We hold our breaths and hope that the rain will continue. So far in 2011 it has.

Rain is so important for the tropical rain forests of Borneo that I decided that, after over one year plus of blog inactivity, my first blog for 2011 will mention two phenomena that are very important for Borneo’s rain forests, one positive: the rain, the other negative:fire. It has been the rain that has kept the fires out of Tanjung Puting over the last one and a half years. Let the rain continue. My blog begins anew on that hopeful note.

Location of Attack, Kuda Laut Post, in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan)

On November 19,2009 around one in the afternoon, a group of 63 Indonesian police officers with two dump trucks supported by Park rangers and Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) rangers moved into an illegal dry ground strip mining area inside the very northern edge of Tanjung Puting National Park and began arresting illegal miners and confiscating their equipment.

This area was close to one of Orangutan Foundation International’s mobile guard posts, called Kuta Laut, which consisted of a large inboard motorboat (the kind that is called “kelotok” in Kalimantan) moored next to a small hut and watchtower on the Sekonyer River’s edge. At about five in the afternoon, the three OFI rangers at the post radioed for help saying that they were being attacked by approximately 25 men with sharpened machetes. These illegal miners had arrived in two boats at the Kuda Laut post, seeking revenge for the mass arrests that had just taken place in the large strip mine up river.

OFI boat named Kuda Laut used as a mobile guard post on northern border of Tanjung Puting National Park

The men burned the watchtower, hut, and boat doing about nine thousand dollars in damage. Outnumbered and outmacheted, our courageous OFI rangers moved back out of harm’s way but remained at their posts.The miners were belligerent and waved their machetes at the rangers but, ultimately, did not harm them.

At the same time in the town of Kumai where many of the illegal miners had families, mobs started forming to protest the arrest of family members for illegal mining. The police responded by putting up numerous roadblocks throughout the town.

At about eight that evening, once the situation in Kumai had cooled down, several OFI rangers accompanied by men from the Sekonyer Village left for the Kuda Laut Post to evacuate the three OFI rangers who had remained with the burned remains of the boat.

I will have more to say about this incident in the next post.

Burned boat, named Kuda Luat, destroyed by angry illegal miners, furious about the arrests of their co-workers in the stripmine

Burned Guard Post, a victim of angry illegal miners

Tut and Tiido photo taken in 2008

Tut’s twins were born on October 15, 2009 at Camp Leakey, our facility supported and managed by Orangutan Foundation International, but Tranquillity, the weaker twin of the two, soon died. We named Thor, the stonger twin who survived, for the day of the week that he was born, Thursday. Since both twins were male, it is possible that the twins were identical ones but, of course, we don’t know for sure.

Thor is doing fine. Tut is very protective of him so it’s been difficult to get a good photo. The photo I have put up with today’s post is one I took of Tut in 2008 when her previous infant, a little male named Tiido, was still alive. I named Tiido after the surname of my childhood best friend in Toronto and her family – not the late dictator of Yugoslavia! Tiido was killed by a wild Bornean bearded pig, but survived for hours after being rescued and returned to Tut by our courageous OFI rangers. Unfortunately, Tiido was dead the next morning when Tut emerged from her nest. The OFI rangers heard Tiido crying and whimpering all night long so assumed he would survive. They were sadly mistaken. He must have died of internal injuries. Let’s hope Thor lives up to his name, the God of Thunder, and not only survives but thrives like his older brother Tom who is now the dominant male of the forest around Camp Leakey.

Tom, Tut's adult male son, with fruit in mouth.

Orangutan twins are a rare occurrence in nature! On October 15,2009 an orangutan female named Tut gave birth to twins at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Indonesian Borneo.
She first appeared on the bridge in the morning carrying her two newborn infants . Since one of the twins seemed weak, the Camp Manager contacted OFI’s Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine in Pasir Panjang near Pangkalan Bun to request medical assistance. Unfortunately, the veterinary team was unable to save the male infant who died shortly afterwards. So far the surviving twin is doing well.

This is the first time that orangutan twins have been witnessed at Camp Leakey and/or Tanjung Puting National Park. Since orangutan females frequently come to Camp Leakey with their newborn infants after an absence of several days or more having given birth in forest solitude, it is possible that twins had been previously born but only one survived. In cases like this, when the female finally arrived in camp with the sole surviving twin, there is no way that the assistants or I would have known that the female had initially given birth to twins.

Among humans there are 32 twin live births per 1,000 live births. Living human twins constitute about 1.9% of the world’s human population. Of these, only 8% are identical.

The weak twin did not survive.

We don’t know the equivalent figures for great ape twins. There have been twins born among the wild chimpanzees at Gombe. Melissa, one of the chimpanzees initially studied by Jane Goodall, had twins many years ago sometime in the 1970’s but only one survived. I remember Jane mentioning Melissa’s twins with excitement (at the birth) and sadness (for the death) in a letter she wrote to me at the time and which I received in Camp Leakey. Then in 1998 Melissa’s offspring Gremlin gave birth to a healthy pair of twins, Goldie and Glitta. So it must run in the family! This is also true of humans. That was the comment that actor (the term she perfers as she made clear when she filmed at Camp Leakey)) Julia Roberts made when she was congratulated on the birth of her twins, saying she wasn’t surprised as her family tended to twin.

An orangutan female carrying twins was sighted by observers in the Lower Kinabatangan region in Sabah (one of two Malaysian states on Borneo) during November 2007. This is the first observation of a wild orangutan with twins ever recorded. Unfortunately, it is not known if that particular orangutan female was ever seen again with her twins.

Tut with her twins

Orangutan twins were also seen in 1991 at the Sepilok Rehabilitation Center where the mother was most likely a rehabilitated ex-captive orangutan. There have also been at least three known births of twins in captivity, two in the United States and one in Indonesia.

Among most large mammals who normally give birth to singletons, twins tend to be smaller and have higher neonatal mortality rates. I have read that in deer populations which are hunted, that the does are more likely to give birth to twins rather than single fawns as compared to populations where hunting does not occur. Females also reproduce more quickly and at younger ages. I am speculating wildly here but I wonder if a similar phenomenon could occur in non-human primates due to excessive stress. Who knows?

All I can say is that it took me almost 40 years of observation to see the first twin births among the population of orangutans who are resident in the forests around Camp Leakey. Who knows what else we might see if we have the patience and robustness to observe for another 40 years?

An understandably weary Tut with her twins

Hot spots in and around the vicinity of Tanjung Puting Park as of the end of August 2009

The fires are blazing again in Kalimantan! I sit weary and exhausted in front of my computer but not nearly as weary as the OFI (Orangutan Foundation International) assistants who have been fighting these fires for several weeks now since the end of August. We were warned that 2009 would be an El Nino year for months but the persistent rains which fell in July belied the situation. It wasn’t until mid-August that the sun took on that deadly red glow as it hung in the grey sky, the glow that tells us this will be no normal dry season. When the sky takes on the colors of a Japanese print we know. We know that it is going to be a long severe season of drought.

The Park is ablaze but not where the tourists go. They may smell the smoke and see the haze in the sky but Camp Leakey and the forests around it remain untouched because we are there and have been for 38 years. It is where the farmers work and where the enclaved villages are located within the Park that the fires burn out of control. It is also on the Park boundaries next to the palm oil plantations that the worst fires burn.

In 2006 during the last El Nino year OFI and its partners battled fires that ultimately destroyed about 15% of Tanjung Puting National Park. We are now trying to prevent the same. We are fighting the fires shoulder to shoulder with our partners in the Forestry Department and we need all the support that we can get.