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Orangutan
Through the loss of habitat these wonderful creatures are being slowly pushed out of the forests as mankind elminates their homes in the forest. The burning of the forest in Burma was a classic example. The fires killed and orphaned so many orangatans.
Their eyes hold a story that is indecipherable and yet intuitively we relate to them. Just one look into those eyes and you are hooked.
Orangutans are highly intelligent with an ability to reason and think. This large, gentle red ape is our forgotten relative. We share 97% of the same DNA. Indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia call this ape Orang Hutan literally translating into English as "People of the Forest". In times past they would not kill them because they felt the orangutan was simply a person hiding in the trees, trying to avoid having to go to work or become a slave.
Almost all of the food they eat grows in the treetops and the frequent rains fill the leaves thus supplying their drinking water. When water is difficult to get, they chew leaves to make a sponge to soak up the water. When it rains very hard the orangutan makes an umbrella for himself out of the big leaves of diptocarp trees.
Why does the orangutan need your help?
A crisis exists for the orangutan. Never before has its very existence been threatened so severely. Economic crisis combined with natural disasters and human abuse of the forest are pushing our closest cousins to extinction!
The threats to the survival of the orangutan are numerous and difficult to remedy.
These include:
Loss of Habitat
Illegal hunting
The notorious pet trade
Once this species roamed over thousands of miles across the rainforests of Southeast Asia. Today they survive only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Their home is the beautiful, lush rainforest. This forest is crossed with large rivers and has the greatest number of species of trees, birds and animals per acre of anyplace in the world. The treasures of this forest are hard to estimate since they are so precious and numerous. Many different species of plants and animals have yet to be discovered there.
Today it is estimated that over 80% of orangutan habitat has been destroyed. Since the fires a couple years ago, it has been difficult to get an accurate count of the wild orangutans remaining. However with such a serious loss of habitat, they have been classified as critically endangeredby the IUCN criteria.
Now even their habitat on the remaining two islands is threatened. This loss of habitat is the result of economic pressures, man's greed and ignorance and natural disasters. The population of Indonesia has grown from 10 million people at the beginning of the century to over 200 million people now. The needs of so many people with little landmass are pressingly urgent, allowing little time for planning or care about the environment. People and orangutans need the same alluvial habitat and in a human versus orangutan conflict, the orangutan does not win.
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DEFORESTATION:
Illegal logging Slash and burn methods to plant palm oil plantations Slash and burn methods used by the local farmers to plant rice The transmigration program of the government to move more of the population of Java in to the rainforests of Borneo Fires caused by the above methods of clearing land were inflamed by the extra dry conditions caused by the drought. The slash and burn techniques also cause the peat and coal deposits deep in the ground to ignite and further escalate the fires
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ILLEGAL PET TRADE
The trade in baby orangutans, though illegal, continues to thrive today. Many hundreds of infant orangutans are taken from the wild for the pet trade every year. This is done by killing the mother and taking the baby. It is estimated that 4-5 orangutans die for every baby reaching the market. They can die as a result of injury from falling several hundred feet to the forest floor when their mother was shot, of the trauma of seeing their mother killed and possibly eaten, from contracting diseases from humans (they are susceptible to all human disease), or from succumbing to the poor conditions in which they are often kept following their capture.
Though infant orangutans are extremely cute, they make very bad pets. All wild animals quickly outgrow being dependent, cuddly infants and grow into dangerous and unmanageable, very strong adults, completely unsuitable as pets.
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POACHING:
Orangutans may be hunted for food either from ignorance of the law, or in disregard of the law because of hunger and/or poverty. The babies can be sold, and the skulls of the dead may be used to create souvenirs that are sold illegally throughout Kalimantan.
Poor concession management in the past, slash and burn agriculture and illegal logging have all contributed to decreasing rainforest habitat. One area in South Kalimantan reported that 80% of logging that occurred in that area was done illegally. For many of the transmigrants (people relocated from Java to alleviate crowding on the country's most populated island) agriculture is survival. The poor soils of Borneo cannot produce such crops as are produced on the rich volcanic soils of Java. Therefore to survive, transmigrants may log or use a slash and burn agriculture that the land cannot support because as the population grows, the interval allowed for the forest to recover decreases.
These conditions are further aggravated by periods of extreme weather such as the prolonged El Nino a couple years ago. Fires raged through East Kalimantan, Indonesia on the Island of Borneo for over 9 months. Smoke from the fires was a health hazard for countries as far away as Singapore and Malaysia. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forest in Kalimantan were destroyed leaving many wild orangutans homeless and desperately seeking refuge in village fruit trees and plantations. These orangutans are not welcome and many have been killed or mutilated or eaten by starving people whose rice crops failed two years consecutively. Once the fires started, the peat and coal deposits common to the island caused further ignition and escalated the fires.
