Blogs / Better Planet

Orangutans. Their name literally translates to “jungle man.” They’re one of our closest living relatives as a species.

Here on the island of Borneo, home to some 50,000, they run wild. This is where the television show Orangutan Island is filmed. So it’s no surprise that you run into orangutans in the rainforest — sometimes almost literally. Or the other way around, which can be frightening to both you and the orangutan.

The number of orangutans on Borneo is decreasing—by some 5,000 per year– due to land encroachment: developments for housing, industry, agriculture and transportation. This sends the orangutans scrambling for new homes. Some end up on reserves. There they feel comfortable and secure. That is until humans arrive for visits. Then it’s an insightful microcosm of what must be occurring in the wild.

Walk down a path and a flash of fur disappears behind a tree. Walk farther along and hear noise above. Curiosity perches orangutans on trees to look down at you. Then feel some drops on your head. Orangutans tend to pee on you when you walk underneath them as they swing from tree to tree.

“They’re just playing,” my guide assures.

Then I step in front of one. Or he steps in front of me. A pregnant pause. Then he gives chase.

“Just playing…,” my guide says again, as I peel off.

But earlier this year an orangutan bit someone.

“It happens. Tourists. They give the orangutan a banana and then try to take it away,” my guide says.

Orangutans are often referred to as the Buddhists of the jungle. But I’ve never met a Buddhist who bites.

Until now.    

In the jungles of Malaysian Borneo not far from the Indonesian border (which is where the accompanying photo was taken) palm oil is being grown more than anywhere else on Earth. You see it on the side of the road, deep in the rainforest, almost everywhere.

Malaysia is the largest producer of palm oil in the world. It’s feeding the massive demand for palm that’s come into play for our food (palm is the second most used edible oil after soy) and perhaps even our fuel (palm is being used in Europe as a source of biofuel). Palm oil is in a lot of unlikely things. It’s in our French fries, potato chips, even our toothpaste. Also, ever wonder where PalmOlive soap gets its name? Palm. It’s frequently used as generic vegetable oil too.

The pervasive use of palm oil is becoming a problem because it’s destroying the lowland forest of the Island of Borneo. Orangutans are being endangered. Loads of other species are being displaced. Borneo actually holds more species than anywhere else on Earth.

I myself while in Borneo have seen saltwater crocodiles, different types of monkeys, snakes, wild boars, orangutans and many species of flora. Equating these wonders to my toothpaste is a big mental leap. But it is what the WWF wants. It’s looking to create sustainable palm oil production by enforcing certain means of farming that would carry through to product labels.

I, for one, would like to see greater transparency along those lines.It would certainly help me the next time I am at the grocery store and pick up a pack of chips. I wouldn’t have to wonder how many orangutans got booted from their homes to accommodate my munchies. Clearer labeling would help us all make better and more informed choices about our connections to nature.        

Waking up in the jungle is blinding. It’s truly a feeling of having popped into somewhere, an existence, consciousness. There isn’t a slow awakening. Nope. The light hits you and the surroundings shake you into a heightened state of curiosity right away. You have to then work to remember where you are and what the *#@!+ you ARE doing in the middle of nowhere. So you look around and try immediately to figure things out. Fire: Out. How long? Anything traipse through camp? My stuff still there? Anything crawl on me? Where is everyone else?   

Here in the Amazon jungle there are lots of questions. Curiosity abounds, in fact. Perhaps it’s because you’re so exposed, so raw, so…”in it.”

Down at the small creek where we find running fresh water to drink, one of my guides is looking at a track. “Animal,” is all I can make out from what he tells me in Portuguese. Then my translator comes along and says it was just a tapir. It must have come through camp at night.

Tapirs are the cutest little guys in the forest. They’re large, but pretty harmless. They’re about 7 feet long and three feet high. They look like a small elephant with its trunk cut short. They are defenseless except if they turn their pudgy bodies around and try to kick you with their small hind legs. They could bite you, but they are very shy. Tapirs feed on fruits, berries, and leaves. They’re also great prey for jaguars.

Here there is no forgiveness or sympathy. The law of the jungle prevails. We humans take that rule to new levels: We dominate the jungle itself and conquer it along with everything in it. The regard for other species is very much lost. We are, according to the famed biologist EO Wilson just one out of 1.6 million identified species on the planet. There may be as many as 100 million species, he estimates. Yet we have no clue about our impact on them and what that does to the planet never mind what we do ourselves to the Earth. Land is being lost, species are being displaced and we never connect the pieces of paper in our drawers and on our desks to that ravaging. Nor do we consider other affects…like beef.

Brazil is now the largest beef exporter in the world, responsible for 25% of the world’s supply. Cattle take up a lot of land too. One recent report exclaims that fast-food hamburgers are wreaking havoc on the Brazilian rainforest.  Unconsciously we order. Unconsciously we eat. Unconscious are we of the effects of all that we do…until we arrive in the land of our consequence. Then we feel uncomfortable and out of place. I wonder why. 

I will be posting occasional field notes and asides from my travels in this space as well as straight up chronicles, reports and opinion pieces. The following is from the Amazon:

Nighttime in the jungle. I’m in a hammock. The fire is burning to my right. The cicadas are on full throttle. In the distance an owl, a toucan, macaws, frogs. Different noises than the typical forest.

I just ate a potato. We found it and dug it up. We buried it beneath the fire to cook. I drank water from a vine. I learned which trees hold magnesia. Which ones are filled with licorice that the Germans, I’m told, buy and make Chiclet gum from.
We hear things rustling among the trees: “Here. No. There.” I’m with a two local guides. Branches crack. Leaves crunch. The fire’s pops become sounds of solace; fire keeps intruders away.

I notice darkness only truly turns to black when you shine a light into the sky.

We are some 50 miles away from the Ariau Towers eco lodge outside Manaus where I stopped before hopping into a canoe to get out here. This is as far into the jungle as I can get in a day. Of course, it’s night now. Dawn will take me farther into the jungles’ s depths.

Alan, one of my guides, informs me that the last time he was out this far he lost place of his canoe. He had to swim and wade for hours through the rainforest’s wetlands to find it. That’s dangerous, he says, because of alligators and snakes.

I pray he remembers where we docked this time.

Something is approaching camp. I can hear it make its way closer and closer…