PanEco Foundation: Sumatra

Another foundation whose focus is on the environment and biodiversity in Indonesia is the PanEco Foundation. Founded in 1996 in Switzerland, PanEco is a Swiss-based, international foundation who are also involved in the reintroduction of species back into the wild, especially orangutans.

Here is a little about their conservation program at the Bukit Tigapuluh National park in Jambi, Sumatra:

PanEco’s conservation programme for the Sumatran orangutan

To improve the situation for the Sumatran orangutan, the PanEco Foundation and its project partners, the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and the Foundation for a Sustainable Ecosystem (YEL) have taken the lead by establishing a similar programme here in Sumatra.

Within the framework of the programme, PanEco has established a new, international standard medical quarantine, able to cater for dozens of orangutans at any one time. The quarantine centre is situated near the village of Batu Mbelin, near Sembahe, just 50 minutes west of Medan, North Sumatra. The Frankfurt Zoological Society has likewise established a new orangutan re-introduction centre adjacent to the Bukit Tigapuluh National park in Jambi province, further to the south.

The decision to establish the new population in this area was based partly on the fact that there were still reliable reports of wild orangutans in the area as recently as the 1830’s. It was also based on the results of extensive field surveys and a feasibility study carried out by Dr Peter Pratje of the Frankfurt Zoological Society between 1996 and 2000.

Several alternative locations were surveyed and assessed but Bukit Tigapuluh National Park was by far the closest to what we were looking for. The park covers approximately 120’000 ha of lowland rainforest. The highest peak is only around 700m high. It is therefore ideal for a lowland animal such as the orangutan and has abundant food resources for orangutans within it. The park is also the largest protected area of lowland forest in Sumatra and at the time did not have an extant wild orangutan population.