A photograph of a burning Indonesian rainforest taken by a DAI project employee won its category in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Earth Day 2010 Biodiversity and Forestry Photo Contest.

“Fire in Kutai National Park,” by Donald Bason, public outreach advisor for the Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP), was selected top photo in the Threats to Biodiversity category. The photo captures one of the major challenges addressed by the project; that is, fires in protected areas caused by land mismanagement and carelessness.

Bason took the photo in August 2009 on an OCSP trip to East Kalimantan. Leaving the park by car after a day’s work, as the light was beginning to fade, Bason noticed smoke rising up above the trees to the west.

“Stopping the car I found a good vantage point and, shielding the camera lens with my hand from the rays of the setting sun, I quickly shot off a number of pictures,” Bason said. Bason took the photo using a Nikon D90 camera with a Nikkor 18–200 mm lens.

The photo contest was organized by USAID’s Economic Growth and Trade office.

Covering 200,000 hectares, Kutai National Park is a biodiversity refuge for a range of species, including orangutans. The park also contains one of the few remaining extensive areas in East Kalimantan of protected mixed Dipterocarpaceae forest.

Kutai National Park has long suffered from encroachment—some 24,000 hectares have been converted to agricultural farmland—as well as from illegal logging and mining. OCSP supports improved landscape management of the orangutan habitat in the park and adjoining industrial plantations with an emphasis on strengthening enforcement (in partnership with the Indonesia Department of Justice), building the capacity of park staff, and instructing surrounding concessions in best management practices through guidelines developed by the USAID-funded OCSP.

Although devastated by fires in 1997 and 1998, the park is still an important refuge for orangutans and contains a viable population of the orangutan subspecies Pongo pygmeus morio. Recent surveys show that the orangutan population—officially estimated at 600 individuals—is not limited to the core area of the park, but is also located in surrounding concessions and could number between 2,500 and 4,500 animals.