Local Residents Encroach Bos Foundation Forest Area

BALIKPAPAN, E Kalimantan, July 27 (Antara) - Local residents encroach on the forest that is used as a training ground for Orangutans that have been released in the Samboja Lestari area, 45 km north of Balikpapan. By doing this, they are directly threatening the lives of 24 Orangutans, which are parts of the total of 170 Orangutan population treated by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), said Program Manager of the BOSF Agus Irianto in Balikpapan, Wednesday. "There are now 300 hectares of our land that have been occupied by them. They even use heavy equipments like bulldozer to take down the trees and clear the land," said Irianto, who is also a veterinarian. The total of BOSF's land is around 1,800 hecares, he added. It was previously reported that BOSF had spent 15 years to turn the critical land into a forest as they plant various trees and plants in order to turn the land into a training centre for wild Orangutans. The land is now referred to as the Forest School 2 (Sekolah Hutan 2) and the main residents of Orangutans are almost at their final stage recovery and ready to be released back into the wildlife. "We are worried that there will be people who are attacked by the Orangutans. The Orangutans there are around the age of 7 to 12, which means they are in their teenage stage, and their strength are six times more than adult humans, their bites are also very strong. For Orangutans, humans are like Papayas," said Head of the BOSF Security Suwardi. He further explained that a while ago there was an Orangutan that felt bothered by a person, and the latter was grabbed by the leg and got bitten on calf by the Orangutan, and although he was wearing a rather thick pair of jeans, the Orangutan bite still ripped his flesh and he needed serious treatment as he spent a few days in the hospital. Irianto stated that the BOSF had attempted to carry out a dialogue with the locals and explain the status of the land that is legally owned the Foundation after it was bought from local citizens at the time. It has also been marked with a board. The Foundation bought the land, hectare by hectare, from the year of 2000 through to 2005, at the time, the price was marked at Rp2 million per hectare. "But they did not seem to care and continue to encroach our land," he said. The local citizens who are occupying parts of the land are residents of the Samboja district, Kilometer 35 of the Soekarno-Hatta road, Irianto revealed, adding that they are encroaching the land as a precaution measure for transmigration, while it is known that the residents of Tani Bhakti are migrants from East Java since 1957. In the year of 2013, the then incumbent Director General of Construction of Transmigration Area Jamaluddien Malik, under the (then) Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration had explained to the Sub-District Head of Kutai Kartanegara (KuKar) that the BOSF had legally purchased the land from citizens who were in possession of the Land Certificate, issued by the Head of the Tani Bhakti village. For that reason, Director General Malik had asked the Sub-District Head, through a letter on May 20 2013 numbered B 424/P2KTTrans/V/2013, to stop any local citizen activities in the BOSF land. For that reason also, all officials under the Kutai Kartanegara Sub-District Governance Secretariat had appealed to the local xitizens to stop their activities within the BOSF land through a letter, signed by the Sub-District's Governemnt and Legal Assistants Charil Anwar on June 22 2016. "We also appeal for the Transmigration office of the Sub-District to explain the situation to the locals and if they refuse to hear it, we are considering to take this into the legal realm by reporting this to the police," said Executive Director of BOSF Dr Jamartin Sihite. It is ironic, he continued, that the Orangutans that had been brought into a place they refer to as a sanctuary, are now being threatened. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation had established the East Kalimantan Orangutan Reintroduction Program at Samboja Lestari in 1991. It specifically aims to provide care and rehabilitation for displaced or orphaned Orangutans rescued from areas of habitat loss. The four-step procedure include Healthcare and Quarantine, in which rescued Orangutans are put under intensive surveillance, care and medical treatment as many rescued orangutans have been exposed to human diseases which they would not normally encounter in the wild. The second step would then be Rehabilitation, this is the phase where rescued Orangutans, majority of which are still in a very young age, are taught to build nests, select foods and recognise predators as they would naturally do in the wild habitat. Then comes the Reintroduction, in which the Orangutans are released into mock forests within the sanctuary area of the BOSF, which is secure and completed with camps, equipment and trained personnel. In the case of healthy Orangutans, after they went through these phases, they can then be released back to their natural habitat, however, there could be some severely ill ones which would not survive in the wild, so for them, BOSF continue to provide welfare and healthcare to these Orangutans, which they will need for the rest of their lives.