Dec 7, 2007, 11:33 GMT
Sandakan, Malaysia - When Malaysian palm oil plantation owner Michael Lee saw that his clear-cutting of a mangrove forest was wiping out the habitat of proboscis monkeys, he made a very unbusiness-like decision: he called for a halt to the destruction.
Setting aside a 300-metre wide and 6-kilometre long strip of forest in northern Sabah, Lee has provided a sanctuary for up 80 of the unique-looking and endangered monkeys.
Known for their long noses, pot bellies and distinctive coloring, the proboscis look like they stepped off the set of a Star Trek movie, but their future is bleak and they may be extinct within a decade.
Lee's sanctuary at Labuk Bay is doing its small part to conserve the fewer than 7,000 proboscis monkeys left on the island of Borneo, the only place they can be found. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) estimates that 3,000 of the monkeys remain in Malaysian Borneo - about 2,000 in Sabah and the rest in Sarawak - with the remainder in Kalimantan, or Indonesian Borneo.
To see the proboscis up close at Labuk Bay, it is a rough drive over a 15-kilometre gravel road lined by oil palms, a common landscape in Malaysia where almost half of the cultivated land consists of the trees. Malaysia has been in the forefront of feeding the biodiesel boom, and has been cutting its forests at an accelerated rate to make room for the palms that produce the oil, which is also used in cooking and cosmetics.
The crop is coming under increasing criticism however. At the UN climate conference in Bali, Wetlands International released a report saying the Kyoto Protocol made a mistake in supporting the use of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The conservation group said the burning of peat lands for the oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia was releasing about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year.
Ahead of the climate conference, the UN Development Programme said in its annual report that 'expansion of cultivation of (oil palm) in East Asia has been associated with widespread deforestation and violation of human rights of indigenous people.'
The UNDP report also noted that Malaysia has registered the fastest rate of increase in terms of forests converted into the plantations.
The destruction is also ruining the diet of the proboscis, which consists mainly of mangrove shoots and leaves, even poisonous ones. The monkey's protruding belly houses a complex chambered digestive system that uses bacteria to digest cellulose to neutralize toxins from certain leaves.
And despite their 400 acres of mangrove forest, the bizarre-looking residents of Labuk Bay still have a hard time finding enough food and often turn up to twice-daily feedings, giving visitors a rare close encounter.
Mealtime is announced by the banging of a metal tray, and the trees are soon being bent under the weight of the incredibly agile monkeys as they jump from limb to limb to make their way to an observation platform.
They live in small groups of 10 to 32 animals, in either a harem or bachelor group, with dominant males having to constantly defend their positions. At the sanctuary there are three harem groups and one group consisting of juvenile, adolescent and adult males.
Also known locally as Dutchman monkey in reference to the former colonial rulers, the exact purpose of their pendulous nose isn't known. However, the noses of the males do swell and turn red when they become excited or angry, and perhaps aid in making the distinctive loud, honking noise they are know for.
After feasting on cucumbers and sugar-free pancakes, the monkeys head back into the woods, returning to what is left of their fast-shrinking natural habitat.
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