Transmigration
Transmigration was a scheme created by the Indonesian government to alleviate overpopulation in the islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok by moving people to the lesser populated periphery of Indonesia. Sumatra and Kalimantan, which are home to the orangutans, were amongst these settlement areas.
Source: The British Geographer
On top of clearing out forests to establish transmigrant areas, the increase in human activity also caused natural resources to be used up. Illegal logging, slash-and-burn, as well as overgrazing of land were also common, as transmigrants sought profits and establishment of land claims by planting tree crops such as rubber, or palm oil plantations. As a result, the programme was widely blamed for accelerating deforestation of rainforests, causing a decline in the orangutan habitat.
Mega Rice Project (MRP)
Source: Tropical Peatlands
Intitiated in 1995, the Mega Rice Project was meant to reclaim some 15,000 km2 of unproductive swamp-forest flood plains in Central Kalimantan into rice paddies. The goal was to increase the rice production in Indonesia in order to reduce her increasing food shortage. In the process of draining peat swamps, 7,000km2 of orangutan habitat was destroyed.
Drained of water, many of the peat swamps are now dry and highly inflammable. As a result, wildfires are abundant in the MRP region, clocking up to more than a hundred fires in a week. Between 1997 to 1998, a drought ignited fires on these drained and reclaimed areas, taking the lives of at least 8,000 orangutans. The MRP has left the region fragmented, and its susceptibility to catastrophic fires remains as a serious threat to orangutans’ survival.