RIP Kelesau Naan
Most of the island is Kalimantan under Indonesian authority. The Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak are in the north, with the small state of Brunei in the north east. The first time I went there I travelled though Sabah and Sarawak, stayed in a Long House, escaped after 3 days of rice wine and singing, saw, or rather heard, much wildlife and got lost in the forest and came across a river and got a lift with a boat. The second time Wyn and I visited Sarawak, we hitched a lift to a fishing village off two vacuum-cleaner salesmen, which I thought odd, as most of the floors we saw were dirt. We visited an Orang Utan sanctuary and learnt of the perils they face. Our last visit was a stopover in Brunei, Wyn got to see the endangered Proboscis monkeys.
Loss of habitat through illegal logging, palm oil plantations and gold miningis is the main reason for the population drop in both the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and its critically endangered Sumatran counterpart (Pongo abelii). Palm oil plantations are encroaching further up the mountain slopes where the palms don’t even grow well. Companies get permits to develop palm oil plantations, but often only use this strategy to log the timber.
Save the Orangutan
Save the Proboscis monkey
