International day of the orangutan: unfortunately we are losing the battle to save it from definitive extinction.
Today, August 19th, is the International day of the orangutan, an endangered animal threatened especially by deforestation.
Leif Cocks, founder and president of The Orangutan Project, interviewed by Mongabay, stated that all 3 species of orangutans, namely Sumatra (Pongo abelii), Borneo (P. pygmaeus) and Tapanuli (P. tapanuliensis), are making the same sad end. And the UN, in turn, has raised the alarm.
Suffice it to say that a century ago there were 230 specimens while today there are 104,700 orangutans from Borneo, 7.500 from Sumatra and less than 800 Tapanuli orangutans.
Their natural habitat is in fact disappearing to make way for oil palm plantations, forcing them to move to agricultural areas where they are much more vulnerable. Illegal hunters are waiting for nothing else! And puppies are also highly coveted to be sold as pets. Not to mention that climate change makes the situation worse.
UN Environment Program, (UNEP), said that “Borneo's deforestation rate has been among the highest in the world for more than two decades and 56% of lowland protected tropical forests - an area roughly the size of the Belgium - lost between 1985 and 2001 ″ and that if deforestation in Southeast Asia continues, “by 2030 an incredible 75% of the original forest will be lost”. Which would be lethal to orangutans!
Numerous initiatives have been created to defend them, including the WWF's “Species Action Plan for orangutans” program. The Orangutan Project is also working in Southeast Asia to avoid the extinction of the species but the work to be done is not little, unlike time, which is scarce.
According to Alan Knight of International Animal Rescue, if everything continues in the same way, orangutans will be permanently extinct within 10 years.
FONT: Mongabay/ WWF
You might also like:
- Orangutans close to extinction due to palm oil (VIDEO)
- Palm oil: the bleak truth behind this photo of a mother orangutan with her baby
- The real victims of the palm oil industry are the orangutans
