If you want to see the last remaining orangutans in the wild, you must travel to either the island of Sumatra or Borneo but you had better hurry as orangutans are in rapid decline. With only 6500 remaining on Sumatra, their numbers have dropped by 14 % in the last four years according to a recent orangutan population study funded by The Great Ape Trust and conducted by Serge Wich, who warns that "unless extraordinary efforts are made soon, it could become the first great ape species to go extinct".
The closest "relatives" in the animal kingdom sharing 97 % of we DNA are critically endangered primarily because of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations, which have drastically reduced their habitat. Hungry orangutans wander onto plantations to eat oil palm berries where they are often beaten or shot. If the oil palm industry's growth pattern continues, 98 % of the Indonesian rainforest will be lost i the next 15 years along with the entire species of critically endangered orangutans,tigers,elephant, rhinoceros, and thousand of species of birds,plants and insects that live only on Sumatera.
The 2008 Guinness Book of Records gives Indonesia the dubious honor of the world's fastest rate of deforestation and Indonesia is the third largest emmitter of green house gases. These records stem from the international oil palm industry's lack of any long term sustainability goals. Currently new plantations expand by either logging primary forest or draining and then burning peatland releasing enourmos amounts of stored carbon. Indonesia, the number one palm oil producer in the world, has a goal to double its current 6,5 million hectares (that's about 10 million acres) under oil mpalm plantation in the next five to eight years-tripling it by 2020.
Orangutans survival then rests in the hands of the Indonesian Government and the oil palm industry, an international conglomerate of companies fron Indonesia, Denmark, England, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, The United States and others. With demamd for palm oil skyrocketing, what possible motivation can be found to stop these companies from continuing their expansion until only a small patch of rainforest remains insufficient to support orangutans or other endangered species. How can conservation ever become more important than profits and greed?
The Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm (RSPO) made up of oil palm growers, processors, traders, retailers, environmental and social NGO members, bankers and investors was formed in 2003 to study sustainability but in the last five years of meetings they have still not worked out any solutions. Though there may be individual sustainable plantations, there are currently no sustainable oil palm companies in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Sumatran Orangutan Society are concerned with the rapidly declining habitat in Sumatra. Experts predict orangutans will be extinct in 5 - 10 years.
Please look at the website for further information :
http://www.orangutans-sos.org/ or contact for volunteer opportunities by Email :
info@orangutans-sos.org .
