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The Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology
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Gail Angela Campbell-Smith
CV
PhD research entitled "Bittersweet Knowledge: Can Farmers And Orangutans Live In Harmony?" As local human populations increase and encroach into wildlife habitats to meet agricultural and livelihood needs, conflicts between humans and wildlife become inevitable as competition for space and resources increases. Increased conversion of forest to farmland may result in contrasting dietary shifts among different species of wildlife. On the one hand, forest conversion may be beneficial to those species that can exploit food sources that are more nutritious and abundant than foods in standing natural forests. On the other hand, some species wildlife may need to supplement their diet with agricultural When conflicts involve an endangered species then the issues becomes of more immediate concern to conservationists because the outcome is often loss of species life. An emerging form of such conflict is between orangutans and humans. Incidents of human-orangutan conflict (HOC) have been reported in Sabah, but not formally studied. Likewise, the critically endangered and endemic Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) has been recorded, incidentally, crop-raiding, but no formal reporting system had previously been established. The overall aim of my research is to conserve orangutans in the wild through focusing on ways to mitigate the potential problem posed by HOC in agricultural farmland in Langkat, northern Sumatra. This will be most realistically achieved through seven main objectives, which will:
In brief, results from my first year of field work have shown that the raiding of agricultural crops by the isolated orangutan population at my study site arises from the reduced availability of natural resources, such that orangutans incorporate the nutritional riches of agricultural crops into their daily diets. As land in the study site has been cleared of natural forest, the resulting increase of crop-raiding and crop damage by these orangutans has become a major problem throughout the local farmlands. These result illustrate the negative consequences of developing plantations that fragment natural forests. The fate of the increasingly isolated orangutans in my study site will provide an insight to the impending future of orangutans in other areas of Sumatra and in Borneo. Although this isolated population is still breeding, the long-term population viability of such a small and isolated group is of great concern. If the continued survival of this critically endangered great ape is to be assured, it is important to more fully understand the patterns and processes of HOC, and to help find cost-effective solutions.
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crops because their natural foods have been lost. Therefore, responses of wildlife to forest conversion may differ between and within species, and this aspect of human-wildlife conflict warrants further investigation. 