A more pitiful sight it is hard to imagine. Just five months old, tiny Monyong blinks in the harsh equatorial sunlight. Her arm is bandaged - the result of a hunters bullet that killed her mother and shattered Monyong's humerus bone.
She stares up at Jimmy, her handler who works in the WWF field office, and purses her lips. Her bright eyes dart left and right in what is clearly bewilderment.
Monyong - an Indonesian word that translates as "lippy", from her endearing habit of pursing her mouth and blowing kisses - is an orang-utan. And the fact she is here illustrates the brutal story of the destruction of one of the world's last true wildernesses.
For it is a grim time to be an orang-utan, one of the four species of great apes who are mankind's closest relatives. Native only to Sumatra and Borneo, the huge, shaggy orange-haired tree-dwellers are under threat.
Monyong was very fortunate, the hunters tried to sell her to the local WWF offices in western Borneo after hearing false rumours that they would pay good money. WWF staff convinced them to hand her over for nothing. Now, given luck, Monyong's arm will heal and she will begin the slow process of rehabilitation. But the fate of individual animals is less important than that of their forests.
Disappearing forest
A World Bank report in 2001 estimated that, by 2010, all the lowland forest in this huge, wild island will be gone, and by 2020 there will be no habitat left outside protected areas in the vast upland wildernesses of Borneo, as loggers continue to destroy the forests at a terrifying rate.
Miraculously, just as there is hope for Monyong, there's also a glimmer of optimism for her habitat. I had come to Borneo, the orang's heartland, to learn the extraordinary story of WWF's attempt to protect the last big wild redoubt of this most charismatic and endearing of creatures.
Rugged hills, carpeted with magnificent forests, straddle the boundary along much of the Indonesia-Malaysia border in the very heartland of Borneo. Most of the island's rivers are born here as rocky, whitewater streams, maturing as they flow down into the lowlands where they supply freshwater ecosystems throughout Borneo, as well as forming the waterways for the boats of Dayaks and other peoples.
In this unspoiled part of Borneo, upriver longhouses nestle along riverbanks and a patchwork of traditional shifting cultivation disturbs the forest without destroying it. Here, the cries of the gibbons still can be heard through the early morning mist, eagles and hornbills still can be seen, and the forests themselves still retain their magnificent natural architecture across millions of hectares of the least accessible land.
WWF and the Heart of Borneo
There is only one place on the planet where the forests of Southeast Asia can be protected on a large enough scale to be permanently viable. It straddles the transboundary highlands of Indonesia and Malaysia, and reaches out through the foothills into adjacent lowlands and to parts of Brunei. WWF calls this area the Heart of Borneo.
WWF is working with Borneo's three governments to protect one of the last great wilderness areas in Asia - covering 220,000 sq km (about the size of the UK,) - through a network of protected areas and well-managed, productive forest to ensure the survival of Borneo's unique biodiversity. The idea is that by 2006, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei (the three nations that own Borneo) will issue a declaration, creating one of the world's largest and richest national parks.
Based in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, WWF's Stuart Chapman is coordinating a dedicated team intent on delivering this ambitious mission for the Borneo forests.
"We want to protect this area while it is still whole and functioning as it has for thousands of years," he says.
"This is one of the last great forest wildernesses on Earth - along with the Congo and the Amazon. And it is much more vulnerable because it is an island."
Stuart Chapman took me to see this huge, beautiful, daunting forest at the heart of Borneo, where no tourists venture and where you can find truly wild orang-utans.
In the Heart of Borneo
We headed into the Betung Kerihun National Park, a protected area that forms one small part of the proposed "heart of Borneo".
We were hundreds of miles from civilisation - an exhilarating feeling, but also distinctly worrying. Trekking in this forest is far from easy: there are pretty green shrubs that slice your fingers to ribbons when you touch them, and fine stems covered with razor-sharp barbs that dangle down and cut into your face. If you put your hand down it will be covered with stinging ants or leeches. But worst of all is the heat. By 7am, it was over 30 degrees, and the humidity had me drenched in sweat.
Subdued by these tough conditions, it then came as a moment
of indescribable elation when finally we saw three orang-utans - a youngster, aged perhaps four or five, its mother, and a large male.The first sign that you are near an orang-utan is a tremendous rustling in the tree canopy, 30 metres or more overhead. They are great climbers but, weighing up to 100kg, orang-utans find life in the treetops precarious. Around us crashed great chunks of foliage as the animals tested branches for strength.
The sighting itself was fleeting - the mother, arms outstretched; a few minutes later, the male, swinging across the boughs, his huge jowls attesting to his age and strength. But fleeting though our encounter had been, suddenly the heat, humidity and leeches didn't matter.
Now or never
WWF's great project to save Borneo will require little short of a miracle. The declaration, which Stuart Chapman hopes will come in 2006, is only the first of many challenges to be met.
Tackling illegal logging is another - throughout our time in the rainforest the threat to this fragile habitat was evident. Huge rafts of logs clog every waterway, stamped and painted with the serial numbers of the illegal loggers.
There was much talk of the importance of "sustainable development" - a way of meeting the needs of people today without squandering natural resources for future generations - but this will take some doing in this very poor country .
To us, the demise of the last great ape of Asia would be a global tragedy. But to the thousands of people on this wild, beautiful island, people for whom clean water, medicines and electricity are still an unlikely dream, the fate of the "man of the forest" is of minimal importance.
"The full diversity of these forests cannot be maintained if they are reduced to a patchwork. The Heart of Borneo aims to maintain very large blocks of inter-connected forest, without which hundreds, or even thousands, of species become extinct. The Heart of Borneo will ensure water security, food security and cultural survival for the people of Borneo. This will help to alleviate poverty. In the long term, it will save the island from the ultimate threat of deforestation and increased impacts from droughts and fires," Stuart Chapman explained.
"We have to make the Heart of Borneo a political and economic reality before its too late. It really is now or never."
Tackling illegal logging is another - throughout our time in the rainforest the threat to this fragile habitat was evident. Huge rafts of logs clog every waterway, stamped and painted with the serial numbers of the illegal loggers.
There was much talk of the importance of "sustainable development" - a way of meeting the needs of people today without squandering natural resources for future generations - but this will take some doing in this very poor country .
To us, the demise of the last great ape of Asia would be a global tragedy. But to the thousands of people on this wild, beautiful island, people for whom clean water, medicines and electricity are still an unlikely dream, the fate of the "man of the forest" is of minimal importance.
"The full diversity of these forests cannot be maintained if they are reduced to a patchwork. The Heart of Borneo aims to maintain very large blocks of inter-connected forest, without which hundreds, or even thousands, of species become extinct. The Heart of Borneo will ensure water security, food security and cultural survival for the people of Borneo. This will help to alleviate poverty. In the long term, it will save the island from the ultimate threat of deforestation and increased impacts from droughts and fires," Stuart Chapman explained.
"We have to make the Heart of Borneo a political and economic reality before its too late. It really is now or never."
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