New population of rarest Orang Utan discovered

[Surroundx]

KUCHING, April 9 (Bernama) -- The Sarawak government planned to gazette an area in Sungai Menyang, Sri Aman as another national park following the recent discovery of the world's rarest sub-species of Bornean orang utan in the area, State Resource Planning and Environment Minister, Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan said Tuesday.

He said the discovery of the Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus sub-species was made during a survey conducted by the Forestry Department, Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Borneo Adventure which covered an area of about 14,000 hectares in Sungai Menyang, which is near the Batang Ai National Park.

"This sub-species is listed as the most severely threatened worldwide," he told a press conference, here, to announce the findings.

He said the state government had held several dialogues with the local people on the plan to create the new national park, so as to raise their understanding on the need to have such a park in order to preserve the habitat of the orang utan.

"Sarawak will continue with its policy of protecting orang utans and their habitats. Not only is this species globally significant, it is also culturally significant to the people of Sarawak," he added.

Source: State News

 

[zooboy28]

I didn't even know there were subspecies of Bornean Orangutan! Wikipedia says there are three, but also that Sumatrans and Borneans only diverged 400,000 years ago, so these subspecies must be very young. It also states (on the Sumatran Orang page) that recent genetic testing (albeit based on a very small sample) revealed that there is significantly more genetic diversity in the Sumatran population than the Bornean, despite there being no subspecies of Sumatrans.

I haven't heard of any captive breeding programmes distinguishing between these subspecies, are any bothering?

 

[Pertinax]

I haven't heard of any captive breeding programmes distinguishing between these subspecies, are any bothering?

I don't think so. I don't know if they can reliably distinguish between these subspecies yet. Presumably when they can find DNA 'markers they could test zoo specimens but most presumably originate from the better known populations anyway?