SIGNS OF
WILDLIFE AND
HOPE
T
he boat driver cuts the engine. We slowly bob and drift along the river toward the direction of what has caught the observation team’s eyes—a sight found nowhere else in the world: the improbably proportioned proboscis monkey.
Researchers with HUTAN’s primate observation unit have spotted a small family group. With the aid of binoculars and a Woodland Park Zoo is a clipboard, they take note of member of the Roundtable juveniles playing, female adults nearby at rest. A dominant on Sustainable Palm Oil and male on a branch all his own advocates for consumers watches over us, potbelly flopped over almost as to shop with companies characteristically as his nose.
committed to certified, sustainable palm oil.
That signature nose is meant to signal his attractiveness, and possibly act as a sound enhancer for better group management. It also has given the proboscis monkey its name and its prominence in the eco-story of Borneo. Here, charismatic endangered species found nowhere else in the world make a compelling case for urgent conservation of the island’s rain forests. Perhaps no face is better associated with that cause than the orangutan. Our red-haired, great ape
8 MYZOO Member Magazine | Fall 2020 | zoo.org
relatives are threatened with extinction in Borneo’s dwindling forests. Their plight is what inspired a team of conservationists to form the HUTANKinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Programme, a long-time Woodland Park Zoo partner. In pre-COVID days, I visited HUTAN staff and their community partners in the Sukau village of Borneo’s Kinabatangan region. I was there to scout for wildlife and stories of hope for their survival. Throughout our journeys along the Kinabatangan River, the program’s co-founder and scientific director, Dr. Marc Ancrenaz, and the HUTAN team gave me helpful spotting tips: scan an area and look for a sign of something out of the ordinary—a shift, a contrast, a movement. That’s how I learned that before you see an orangutan, you'll more likely spot its nest, a cradle of broken branches and tufts of leaves. Orangutans occasionally dot the riverfront canopy, making their way through ripe, fruiting trees to nest in the treetops. More plentiful are the macaques, the long tailed and pig-tailed monkeys whose swimming skills make it possible to spot them low along the waterfront. The rarer silvery langurs require eagle eyes to find in the canopy, given away by the gray tips of hair that stand in contrast to green leaves.
