Batang Ai National Park (BANP) and Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary (LEWS) are home to 90% of the orang-utan in Sarawak. The Batang Ai-Lanjak-Entimau Landscape is contiguous to the Betung Kerihun National Park in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, where there is an estimated population size of 1,790 orangutans. Although together they represent only approximately 4% of the Bornean orangutan population, it is nevertheless the largest contiguous protected habitat for the Northwest Bornean orangutan from the subspecies Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus.
Conservation Challenges
In 2016, the threat level for Bornean orangutans was upgraded to ‘Critically Endangered’ under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The alarming upgrade was due to increased threats of habitat degradation and forest loss as well as hunting. Thus, there is an urgent need to ascertain current population trends and reassess threat levels to strategically decide on priority actions that need to be applied within Batang Ai-Lanjak-Entimau and subsequently Betung Kerihun.