Tanjung Puting National Park | |
---|---|
Location | West Kotawaringin Regency, Kalimantan, Indonesia |
Nearest city | Pangkalan Bun |
Coordinates | 3°03′S111°57′E / 3.05°S 111.95°E [1] |
Area | 4,150 km2 (1,600 sq mi) [1] |
Established | 1982 |
Visitors | 2,046(in 2007 [2] ) |
Governing body | Ministry of Forestry |
Official name | Tanjung Puting National Park |
Designated | 12 November 2013 |
Reference no. | 2192 [3] |
Tanjung Puting National Park is a national park in Indonesia located in the southeast part of West Kotawaringin Regency in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan (Central Borneo). The nearest main town is the capital of the Regency, Pangkalan Bun. The park is famous for its orangutan conservation.
The park is composed of 416,040 hectares of dryland dipterocarp forest, peat swampforest, heath forest, mangrove and coastal beach forest, and secondary forest. [4] The park may be accessed from Kumai by speedboat along the Kumai River and then the Sekonyer River to Camp Leakey, a journey that takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes at best. [5] The Kumai River forms the northern border of the park. Beyond that the peat forest has been removed to make way for oil palm plantations. [6] [ self-published source ]
Despite being a protected national park, approximately 65% of the park's primary forest is degraded. It is the loss of natural habitat that is the greatest threat to the wildlife. Friends of National Parks Foundation is an Indonesian NGO that has been working to restore the habitat in the Pasalat and Beguruh regions of the park since 1997. It also operates a conservation education centre in Pasalat.
Four research centers have been established within the park for the study and rehabilitation of orangutans and other primates. Camp Leakey, founded in 1971 with assistance from the Leakey Foundation, was the first of these centers. It was here where Dr. Birute Galdikas began her career studying the behavior of rescued and orphaned orangutans that were reintroduced into the wild. Her research was highlighted as the cover article of National Geographic in October 1975. Dr. Galdikas is now considered one of the world’s leading experts on orangutan behaviour and is the founder and president of the Orangutan Foundation International.
Orangutan Foundation runs Pondok Ambung Tropical Forest Research Station, supporting Indonesian and international research students. [7] [8] This national park facility has been developed and maintained by Orangutan Foundation and provides facilities to study the park’s diverse flora and fauna. Orangutan Foundation have been awarding small research grants to individual students for many years, with a focus on supporting Indonesian students.
The park was set aside in the 1930s by the Dutch colonial government for the protection of the orangutans and proboscis monkey, and was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1977 and a national park in 1982. It has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International. [9]
In addition to orangutans and proboscis monkeys, the park is also home to gibbons, macaques, clouded leopards, sun bears, wild boars, porcupines, and sambar deer. The park also features many reptiles, including crocodiles, monitor lizards, and pythons, birds, including hornbills and kingfishers, and insects, such as the giant Bornean butterfly. The Pondok Ambung Tropical Forest Research Station was established in 2005 for the study of all wild species found in the park. [10]
Today Tanjung Puting National Park is a popular ecotourism destination, with many local tour companies offering multi-day boat tours to view wildlife and visit the research centers. The park was home to 105,000 people as of 1997. [4] The park was heavily damaged by fires in 1997 and 1998, and today remains threatened by illegal logging, illegal mining, and forest clearing for agricultural uses.
Conservation efforts by Indonesian NGO Friends of the National Parks Foundation is leading towards a slow but progressive reforestation of damaged areas. Their reforestation work has seen the planting of thousands of saplings in the area to recreate habitat for the endemic wildlife in the area.
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be one species. From 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan and the Sumatran orangutan. A third species, the Tapanuli orangutan, was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago.
The proboscis monkey or long-nosed monkey is an arboreal Old World monkey with an unusually large nose, a reddish-brown skin color and a long tail. It is endemic to the southeast Asian island of Borneo and is found mostly in mangrove forests and on the coastal areas of the island.
Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas or Birutė Mary Galdikas, OC, is a Lithuanian-Canadian anthropologist, primatologist, conservationist, ethologist, and author. She is a professor at Simon Fraser University. In the field of primatology, Galdikas is recognized as a leading authority on orangutans. Prior to her field study of orangutans, scientists knew little about the species.
The Borneo peat swamp forests ecoregion, within the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, are on the island of Borneo, which is divided between Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.
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The Bornean orangutan is a species of orangutan endemic to the island of Borneo. Together with the Sumatran orangutan and Tapanuli orangutan, it belongs to the only genus of great apes native to Asia. It is the largest of the three species of orangutans. Like the other great apes, orangutans are highly intelligent, displaying tool use and distinct cultural patterns in the wild. Orangutans share approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. Also called mias by the local population, the Bornean orangutan is a critically endangered species, with deforestation, palm oil plantations, and hunting posing a serious threat to its continued existence.
Kumai is a port in Central Kalimantan province in Indonesia, on the island of Borneo. It lies on the Kumai River.
The Kumai River is a river of Central Kalimantan province, Borneo island, Indonesia.
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Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) has its headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Dr. Birutė Galdikas, one of three anthropologists to study great apes under the guidance of Dr. Louis Leakey, OFI continues to rescue and rehabilitate orangutans, preparing them for release back into protected areas of the Indonesian rain forest. In addition, OFI promotes the preservation of rain forest habitats.
The Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation is an Indonesian non-profit non-governmental organization founded by Dr. Willie Smits in 1991 and dedicated to the conservation of the endangered Bornean orangutan and its habitat through the involvement of local people. It is audited by an external auditor company and operates under the formal agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry to conserve and rehabilitate orangutans. The BOS Foundation manages orangutan rescue, rehabilitation and re-introduction programmes in East and Central Kalimantan. With more than 400 orangutans in its care and employing more than 440 people at a 10 sites BOS Foundation is the biggest non-human primate conservation non-governmental organization worldwide. Nyaru Menteng and Samboja Lestari are the BOS Foundation sites that have received most extensive media coverage. Nyaru Menteng, founded by Lone Drøscher Nielsen, has been the subject of a number of TV series, including Orangutan Diary, Orangutan Island and the series Orangutan Jungle School, airing since 2018.
The Borneo lowland rain forests is an ecoregion, within the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, of the large island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It supports approximately 15,000 plant species, 380 bird species and several mammal species. The Borneo lowland rain forests is diminishing due to logging, hunting and conversion to commercial land use.
Kutai National Park is a lowland national park located on the east coast of Borneo Island, in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia, ranging approximately 10 to 50 km north of the equator.
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