Policies and laws for the pro- tection of forests and orangutans
In order to mitigate the above-mentioned challenges to con- servation of habitat and species, the Indonesian government has created a very comprehensive system of functional forest categories, and institutions responsible for managing its forests (appendix 1) (Map 18). Te Indonesian government has also developed an extensive list of policies and laws to protect its wildlife, including the Sumatran orangutan (appendix 2).
Orangutans have been protected under national law since 1931, but most of the institutional framework for nature conserva-
tion was developed in the 1980s and 1990s, concurrent with the growth of industrial-scale forestry. In the early 1980s, In- donesia developed an extensive national parks system, supple- menting and upgrading its existing network of nature reserves dating mostly from Dutch colonial times. Te Gunung Leuser National Park itself was the first of the new parks, established in 1980 for its exceptional biodiversity, which includes the Suma- tran orangutan. In 1998 a much wider area, the Leuser Ecosys- tem, that includes a much greater proportion of the orangutan’s range, was delimited by presidential decree. In 2008 part of the