British zoo to help Borneo orangutans

CHESTER, England, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- A British zoo says it will help Borneo construct special "orangutan bridges" to allow the animals to move around in an area fragmented by deforestation.

A team from Chester Zoo will work with the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project this year to construct the bridges, the BBC reported Monday.

Marc Ancrenaz, co-founder of the Kinabatangan project, says the organization has been building bridges because studies have shown the local orangutan populations have been fragmented and isolated from each other by vast tracts of palm oil plantations, roads, villages, and rivers.

Unlike many other primate species, orangutans cannot swim, so rivers become impassable barriers.

The zoo team will build bridges out of a tough polyester webbing material used to make swings and hammocks in the zoo's orangutan enclosure.

The webbing has been proven to be "orangutan-proof," Nick Davis of the Chester Zoo said, and "we're limited in the materials we can use, because they destroy everything."

"It's a very strong material that's used for strapping," Davis said. "And it's really hardy so it doesn't rot.

"[The aim of the bridges] is to cover the drainage channels and tributaries that come from the palm oil plantations.

"The worry is that the forest out there has been so fragmented that the orangutans can't move around at all."