JAKARTA — Indonesia said it will reserve thousands of hectares of forest in Borneo island for some 200 captive orangutans which will be released in a conservation drive, an official said Friday.
"A foundation has asked for a permit on about 86,000 hectares of forests in Kutai area in East Kalimantan (Borneo) to be used for orangutan conservation," forestry ministry secretary general Boen Purnama said.
Conservationists have been looking for large areas to release the endangered great apes as vast tracts of Indonesian jungle have been cleared for plantations and logging.
Purnama said the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) had asked for the space in the forests, which were formerly used for logging and need to be restored before being used for conservation.
"We expect to release about 190 out of 226 orangutans, which are being held in captivity in East Kalimantan, in the forests," BOSF spokesman Nico Hermanu said.
"Our hope is to release all orangutans in rehabilitation before 2015 to reach the government's target," Hermanu said.
The government also announced its pledge to an international meeting on orangutan conservation in Bali on Thursday.
"Conservation of orangutan habitat is a ?triple-win? scenario," USAID Director for Indonesia Walter North said in a statement.
"It preserves endangered great apes, protects forest biodiversity, and sequesters large amounts of carbon to combat climate change," he said.
Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia.
Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved. More »