The Bornean Orangutan and Habitat Protection in Sabah

A wild orangutan needs a lot of forest, and a connected forest. In the lowlands of eastern Sabah, that has become the rarest thing of all: the trees that once let an ape travel for kilometres without touching the ground now stop at the edge of an oil palm estate. Whether the Bornean orangutan survives in this landscape is, in large part, a question of law, land, and corridors.

What law protects the orangutan in Sabah?

Sabah writes its own wildlife rules. Rather than falling under Peninsular Malaysia’s federal wildlife statute, orangutans in Sabah are governed by the state’s Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997. Under that Enactment, the Bornean orangutan is a totally protected species — the strictest category, above the merely “protected” tier — which makes it an offence to hunt, keep, or trade one.

For most of the Enactment’s life, the penalties went unchanged. In 2016 the Sabah state assembly approved amendments because, as reported at the time, the law had been enforced for almost 20 years without the penalties being reviewed. The revisions raised fines by two to five times and introduced mandatory jail terms. For hunting inside a wildlife sanctuary, for example, the penalty moved from a fine of up to RM50,000 or up to five years’ imprisonment to a fine of between RM50,000 and RM100,000, or imprisonment of six months to five years, or both. The amendments took effect in September 2016.

Enforcement of the Enactment sits with the Sabah Wildlife Department, which also manages protected areas and runs the rehabilitation programme at Sepilok.

How many orangutans are left, and are they declining?

The most detailed recent picture comes from a survey published in the journal PLOS ONE, Changes to Sabah’s orangutan population in recent times: 2002–2017. Combining its 2014–17 count of about 9,558 orangutans across eight surveyed regions with separately reported numbers, the paper gives a conservative estimate of about 10,300 orangutans in Sabah’s permanent forest reserves and wildlife sanctuaries — and reports that more than 70% of them live inside Totally Protected Areas.

The average hides two different stories. Large populations in the interior — including sustainably logged forests such as Deramakot and the Segama region — held steady over 15 years, which the authors read as a sign that well-managed production forest can keep orangutans alive. The fragmented lowland populations in the east did not fare as well.

Population (Sabah)	Earlier estimate (2002–03)	Later estimate (2014–17)	Trend
Deramakot + Segama (interior, logged)	~5,376	~5,933	Stable
Tabin	~1,401	~1,207	Down ~15%
Kulamba	~500	~361	Down ~30%

Paired 2002–2017 estimates from the PLOS ONE survey. The paper reports a minimum of about 650 orangutans lost across the protected areas of eastern Sabah’s lowlands since 2002. Separately, the survey cites other studies recording about 800 orangutans in the Lower Kinabatangan region, down from an earlier estimate of roughly 1,125 — figures drawn from those separate studies rather than the paired survey above.

Globally the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, in the 2016 assessment (errata 2018) by Ancrenaz and colleagues — a status the PLOS ONE survey also cites — so Sabah’s stable interior populations matter well beyond the state.

Why is the Kinabatangan floodplain the front line?

The Lower Kinabatangan is a narrow ribbon of surviving forest along one of Sabah’s great rivers, and it is surrounded by farmland. Decades of clearing have turned it into small islands of protected habitat within a wider landscape now dominated by oil palm plantations, one of Malaysia’s most important agricultural exports. Orangutans in patches too small to sustain them may be forced to cross open ground and human land to reach the next fragment.

Part of the response has been to rebuild connections rather than only fence off what remains. HUTAN, a grassroots research and conservation group founded in 1998 and working in the Kinabatangan floodplain, creates wildlife corridors through reforestation and land purchase — replanting cleared riverbanks and buying back strategic parcels so that separated forest blocks can again function as one. The premise is that orangutans can use a mixed forest and oil-palm landscape as long as forest corridors let them move between blocks.

What happens to orphaned orangutans?

When an orangutan is orphaned, injured, or surrendered from captivity, the destination is often Sepilok. The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, established in 1964, is described by Orangutan Appeal UK as the first centre in the world to dedicate itself to rehabilitating orangutans. It is owned and run by the Sabah Wildlife Department and sits within the 43-square-kilometre Sepilok-Kabili Forest Reserve.

Rehabilitation is slow and deliberate. Young orangutans have to be taught the basics of being an orangutan — tree climbing, foraging, and nest building — before they can survive alone. The full process, especially for animals that spent years in captivity, can take up to seven years. According to the centre, around 60 to 80 rehabilitated orangutans now live independently in the surrounding reserve, while roughly 25 orphans are cared for in its nurseries. Sepilok is both a working conservation facility and one of Sabah’s best-known windows onto the species for the public.

What this adds up to

Sabah’s approach rests on three parts working together. The law designates the orangutan as totally protected and, since 2016, backs that with heavier penalties. Protected areas hold the large, stable interior populations that anchor the species’ future. And habitat work — corridors in the Kinabatangan, rehabilitation at Sepilok — aims to repair the fragmented lowlands where the recorded losses are concentrated. The measures are well established for the interior populations, while the eastern forest edge remains where the population declines are concentrated.

What’s next

• Follow the corridor story. Watch whether reforestation and land-purchase efforts in the Lower Kinabatangan reconnect enough forest to stabilise that population.
• Track the next survey. Population estimates lag by years; a newer count will show whether the 2016 penalty increases and continued protection have changed the eastern trend.
• Read the companion pieces. See our overview of the Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 and the wider context on palm oil and deforestation in Malaysia.
• If you visit, choose operators and centres, such as Sepilok, that channel support into the Sabah Wildlife Department’s conservation and rehabilitation work rather than close-contact tourism.