Current Crisis
We are robbing one of the earth's greatest rainforests, the Borneo Rainforest. We are destroying, burning, and taking over one of the most biodiverse parts of the world.
(Vanishing Borneo: Saving One of the World’s Last Great Places, 2017)
Current Crisis
We are robbing one of the earth's greatest rainforests, the Borneo Rainforest. We are destroying, burning, and taking over one of the most biodiverse parts of the world.
(Vanishing Borneo: Saving One of the World’s Last Great Places, 2017)
Current Crisis
We are robbing one of the earth's greatest rainforests, the Borneo Rainforest. We are destroying, burning, and taking over one of the most biodiverse parts of the world.
(Vanishing Borneo: Saving One of the World’s Last Great Places, 2017)
Our
Relatives
Did you know we share 97% of our DNA with orangutans? Like humans, orangutans develop intense relationships with each other. Not only do their actions and way of living affect each other, but they affect other species as well, not to mention the entire ecosystem around them. (“NIH-funded scientists publish orangutan genome sequence,” 2015)
Life As A Bornean Orangutan
Orangutans need mature rainforests to survive. They eat a diet of fruits and spend their entire lives in trees. They currently have a very fragmented habitat which can be bad because they sometimes come together in small groups to socialize and mate but generally live independently with their immediate families... so if they can't get together than they cannot mate and the reproduction rate will be an even longer process. (WWF, 2019)
A Female Bornean Orangutan
Their Estimated Current Species Population is 104,700 (WWF, 2019)
The most recent (2004) estimate for the species is that approximately 55,000
Bornean Orangutans inhabit 82,000 km² of forest. (IUCN, 2019)
A Male Bornean Orangutan
According to an estimated early population size one century ago, as many as 200,000 orangutans roamed in the wild. Meaning that over the last century that number has been cut in half... and is still going down at a rapid rate (WWF, 2019).
60% of their diet consists of fruits including mangos, mangosteens, lychees, and figs. The other 40% includes young leaves and shoots, insects, soil, tree bark, and sometimes eggs and small vertebrates. They have been recorded to eat over 500 different types of plants. (WWF, 2019)
Reproductive Patterns
Orangutans have a low reproductive rate; slowest breeding of all mammal species, giving birth to a single young every 6-8 years (“Orangutan Reproduction - Animal Facts and Information,” 2013)
They have this low reproductive rate because, like humans, they have a long birth interval, along with singular offspring when they do give birth, and they take a long time to reach sexual maturity. (“Orangutan | Species | WWF,” 2017)
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Low birthrates make it harder for the population to bounce back once there is a decrease. Low reproductive rate means that even a small decrease in numbers can lead to extinction.
Bornean Orangutans are struggling to adjust with their ways fixed in nature. They have their own niche in the Indonesian rain forests, and as it is being disturbed, they find it hard to come back from their staggering numbers. Orangutans have been around long before we have, and yet now they are finding it hard to compete and survive in their own habitat with us invading their homes.
ACT NOW!
Protecting One of the World’s Most Endangered Species