“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 one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of the same DNA as humans. 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.
Orangutans are unique in the ape world. There are four kinds of great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. Only the orangutan comes from Asia; the others all come from Africa. There are two separate species of orangutan - the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) and the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) Orangutans are only found on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
The orangutan is the only strictly arboreal ape and is actually the largest tree living mammal in the world. The rest of the apes do climb and build sleeping nests in the trees, but are primarily terrestrial (spending their lives on the ground). Even the hair colour of the orangutan, a bright reddish brown, is unique in the ape world.
Why does the orangutan need our help? Orangutans are one of the most critically endangered of the great apes, due to poaching and habitat loss. Based on the World Bank’s estimation that mechanized logging in the Kalimantan forest, (Indonesian Borneo), will result in its total loss by 2010, and other statistics stating that wild orangutans are disappearing at a rate of 5,000 orangutans per year, optimistic predictions give the orangutan ten more years before extinction in the wild.
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. They have lost approximately 80% of their habitat in the last 20 years. We lost approximately 1/3 of the wild population of orangutans during the fires of ‘97-’98. There are approximately 12,000 to 15,000 orangutans remaining in Borneo (compared to about 20,000 in 1996) and approximately 4,000 to 6,000 left in Sumatra (compared to about 10,000 in 1996).
The threats to the survival of the orangutan are numerous and difficult to remedy.
These include:
Loss of Habitat
Poaching
The illegal pet/zoo trade
Until recently this was all forested, orangutans and gibbons lived wild. Now many are dead, some have been rescued, and some are in the pet trade.
Borneo needs help!
Central Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia
Go HERE to see life in the Nyaru Menteng nursery
Go HERE to see the reason for this