Work Supported in 2003-2004

Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation – Indonesia (BOS-Indonesia) and the Balikpapan Orangutan Survival Foundation – USA (BOS-USA)

BOS-Indonesia and BOS-USA are both nonprofit environmental organizations that support conservation of orangutans and their habitats.

Specifically, BOS-Indonesia 1) supports the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry in the field of law enforcement 2) sponsors rehabilitation and reintroduction programs for confiscated orangutans on the island of Borneo 3) supports educational activities for school children, focusing on nature conservation and orangutans and 4) sets up new protected areas in Indonesia. BOS-Indonesia is also involved in preparatory work for setting up the new Meratus National Park, as well as efforts for a new debt for nature swap for an important swamp forest area where wild orangutans still have a chance to survive in the wild. BOS-Indonesia also works closely with local people to teach them better ways of land use that do not destroy or burn forests, while providing higher sustainable income.

BOS-USA is an independent U.S. nonprofit organization, formed to support orangutan conservation and to raise awareness of the plight of the orangutan. BOS-USA supports the following projects in the field:

Wanariset Orangutan Rehabilitation Center

Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project

Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation Center

Project Hutan

The Great Ape Trust has made contributions to BOS-USA for conservation education purposes and funded professional interactions for in situ conservation action and ethics for BOS-Indonesia. Additionally, Lead Scientist Robert Shumaker serves on the Science Advisory Board of BOS– Indonesia and the Advisory Board of BOS – USA.

Golden Lion Tamarin Reintroduction

Great Ape Trust is joining the Frankfurt Zoological Society as a supporter of the reintroduction of golden lion tamarins (GLTs). Benjamin Beck, Great Ape Trust Director of Conservation, has served as coordinator of this program in Brazil since 1983. During those two decades, 153 GLTs drawn from zoos and research centers from more than a dozen countries on three continents have been reintroduced into remnants of Brazil’s Atlantic Coastal Rainforest. The reintroduced GLT population reached 550 in 2003, due to reproduction. This is more than one-third of all GLTs now living in the wild in Brazil. These GLTs live in the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve (created specifically to save the last wild GLTs) and on 26 privately owned ranches surrounding Poço das Antas. These ranches constitute more than a third of protected habitat available for wild GLTs and all of the other animals and plants that make up this ecosystem.

A major challenge at this juncture is to link up the Reserve and all of these isolated ranches so that wild and reintroduced GLTs can move freely and interbreed. An ambitious program to plant interlinking corridors of native trees is underway and monitoring the use of these corridors by the reintroduced population is a new initiative for the reintroduction team.

Another change is that while we will continue to try to monitor individuals and groups in the reintroduced population, we are purposively embarking on a five-year plan that will change our emphases from intensive behavioral data collection of provisioned groups with known composition, to population-wide monitoring of less habituated groups whose composition will be recorded twice per year. This has become the only cost-effective option for tracking the size and distribution of such a rapidly growing population. GIS/GPS technology is being used to follow the GLTs’ habitat use and changes in the area of available habitat.

Kamwenge Alleviation of Wood Resources and Environment

Great Ape Trust contributes to the Kamwenge Alleviation of Wood Resources and Environment (KAWRE), a three-year project in Uganda. Only 40% of forest/woodland in Uganda is formally protected. The balance is privately or publicly owned and forest cover is being rapidly depleted for charcoal manufacture, harvest for construction beams, and clearing for grazing. Reforestation is virtually non-existent and demand is increasing. The resultant pressure on protected areas impacts a variety of forest-dwelling wildlife, including chimpanzees and gorillas. KAMRE’s goals include 1) survey of all remaining tropical high forest, 2) community needs assessment for wood resources, 3) public education concerning forest conservation, reforestation, and sustainable use, 4) priority reforestation of selected sites suffering serious erosion, fuel wood shortage and water shortage due to clear-cutting, 5) enlistment and training of local residents for tree nursery care, tree planting and care, and tree species selection, 6) mobilization in local communities for long-term forest conservation and regeneration, with 7) special involvement of disadvantaged groups (women, disabled, young people, HIV/AIDS sufferers). The research and community training is conducted primarily by staff of the Makerere University Biological Field Station. Great Ape Trust contributions support KAMRE, a local NGO founded by Babiiha John and currently coordinated by Tinka John. KAMRE is a group of local stakeholders (e.g. park managers, agriculturalists, women’s groups, ecotourism operators, local officials) whose implementation efforts complement the technical efforts of the Field Station. There are measurable outputs, and future support will depend on progress toward these goals.

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