Male orangutans like this one are the focus of Knott's research into hormones, breeding, and food supply. The great apes, one of humanity's closest animal relatives, saw their global population decline 97 percent in the 20th century.
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Orangutan research yields conservation dividendsAwareness, government action cut illegal logging in forest homeFebruary 8, 2007By Alvin Powell
Cheryl Knott remembers the first time she heard the sound of chainsaws shattering the quiet in Indonesia's Gunung Palung National Park. It was the late 1990s and Knott, an associate professor of anthropology who studies orangutan biology in the park's rain forest, said researchers at the Cabang Panti Research Station listened as the ominous sound grew ever nearer. "There were illegal loggers in the National Park, thousands of loggers," Knott said. "Every morning, you could hear the sound of chainsaws, and knew they were getting closer." By 1999, Knott and her team had had enough. Illegal loggers had come so close to the station that areas where their study animals had once traveled were now logged. Realizing that if they did nothing, there might be nothing left to study, the researchers decided to augment their scientific work with a new conservation initiative aimed at educating people in the surrounding area about the value of the rain forest and the creatures that live there. The result has been a multipronged education and outreach effort formalized in 2002 that Knott said has contributed to the cessation of illegal logging in Gunung Palung and brightened prospects for the great ape's future. |
