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)
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.
Threats
How is the bread in your sandwich wiping out orangutans?
I want you to try to look into this little guy’s eyes and tell him that his life is worth less than a loaf of bread. His name is Gatot and he was found crying out in a forest in Ketapang, Indonesia by a man looking for firewood (“Youngest orangutan at our center visits baby school for the first time,” 2016). Gatot, like countless other baby orangutans, are regularly being orphaned due to the world’s desire for palm oil and paper pulp along with threats from poaching and the illegal pet trade (WWF, 2019). Palm oil is a cheap vegetable oil that has a wide variety of uses including food processing (especially in packaged bread), biodiesel, as an ingredient in soap, detergent, and lipstick, as well as a host of other products (WWF, 2019). Palm oil is a problem for orangutans because it is produced in an incredibly unsustainable way. The majority of palm oil producers start by burning rainforests, along with their inhabitants, leading to massive deforestation. Then, the land is converted into a mono culture and sprayed with pesticides, leaving no room for orangutans to live. When they are done, the company moves on to another location, leaving their plantations devoid of life (Smithsonian, 2016).
(Platt, 2015)
Nadiya, An 18-Month-Old Baby Orangutan
(The Jakarta Post, 2019)
Paper Pulp and Not a lot of Babies
Bornean Orangutans are also being threatened by clear cutting rain forest for paper pulp and timber. The two companies that do the most damage to Indonesia’s rainforests are Asia Pulp & Paper and Asian Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited, who account for more than 80% of Indonesia’s paper pulp production (Mongabay, 2012). After the paper pulp industry is done with the land, the palm oil businesses roll in and replace their old growth forest habitat with oil palms (This eradication of their habitat leaves them homeless and they are often macheted, shot, or burnt alive because they are considered an agricultural pest (The Orangutan Project, 2019). Their habitat has been extremely fragmented by agricultural and logging industries. Extremely detrimental to their complex social groups of 100 individuals or more (The Guardian, 2019). How would you feel if someone built a palm oil plantation right through the middle of your neighborhood? The fact that their population has been cut in half from 1999 to 2015 and is still declining is bad news for orangutans because they are considered the slowest reproducing species in the world due to their long gestation periods and few offspring (The Orangutan Project, 2019). This means that if their population keeps declining, they might not be able to recover from our love of cheap palm oil and paper.
Orangutans don’t belong in cages
How would you feel if the following series of events occurred in your life, starting when you were about six years old? First, aliens come to your house, decide it belongs to them, and proceed to burn it to the ground. Then, they kill your mom and take you away. They put you in a metal cage and then you are shipped hundreds of miles from your home. They take you to a noisy street corner and you are held and observed by lots of different aliens. One of them eventually puts you in another metal cage and takes you with him. You think this could be the start of a new life, maybe this alien is taking you back to your home to see your mother. But in reality, you never see the outside of that cage again. This is the reality for 200-500 baby orangutans that get caught in the pet trade every year (WWF, 2019).
They are considered one of the smartest living things on earth, yet some people deem it acceptable to buy them as pets and take them from their families, and lock them in cages or tie them to a pole for their entire lives. How do you think people would feel if the same thing happened to a human child? Moreover, even though orangutans are protected by international conservation laws, pet traders are rarely prosecuted and are merely charged with mild fines if they are caught. (“BOS Foundation’s Position on Palm Oil – updated 27 June 2019 – BOSF,” 2019)
Orphaned Baby Orangutan
(UNILAD, 2019)
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Approximately three-quarters of Indonesia’s timber is illegally harvested. WWF assists producers and traders, educates, consumers, and works with partners to enable responsible forestry and restore local communities. (WWF, 2019)
In Indonesia and Malaysia, they burned so much of their forests that they released more CO2 than the entire annual output of Australia between August and October, releasing 626 megatons of CO2. (“Borneo is burning: The climate bomb experts say is fueled by the West - MontrealTimes,” 2019)
How The Logging Industry is Destroying Orangutan Habitat
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In 2017, the US bought $617, 770.56 worth of wood and wood products from Indonesia (World Bank, 2017)
Orangutans live primarily in trees and in forests (The Orangutan Project, 2019)
Indonesia is the world’s main producer of tropical timber, making approximately $5 billion annually. 55% of the remaining forest is meant for logging. (Mongabay, 2006)
Fires are commonly started to clear the land and undergrowth for farming and palm oil plantations. (The Orangutan Project, 2019). Fires kill the orangutans and destroy their homes and the smoke confuses them.
Most fires that start directly correlate with logging companies and palm oil companies… so stop logging → stop fires (Mongabay, 2006)
(“The Balancing Act in Borneo: Managing Deforestation, Sustainability, Biodiversity, Health, and the Value of Rainforests | EveryONE: The PLOS ONE blog,” 2013)
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Palm Oil Plantations are one of the main reasons for the destruction of orangutan habitat for they are now the leading suppliers for a global market that demands more of the tree's versatile oil for cooking, cosmetics, and biofuel. (The Orangutan Project, 2019)
Palm Oil is Destroying The Orangutans's Home
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Palm oil plantations often replace tropical forests, killing endangered species, uprooting local communities, and contributing to the release of climate-warming gases. The orangutans that are displaced starve to death, are killed by plantation workers as pests, or die in the fires. (The Orangutan Project, 2019)
Poaching orangutan infants and hunting for meat also threatens the species. Mothers are often killed for their babies, which are then sold on the black market for pets
Babies cling to their mothers and suckle their mother’s milk until 6 years of age.
There are some rescues specifically for these displaced Orangutans. (The Orangutan Project, 2019)
Poaching(!)
ACT NOW!
Protecting One of the World’s Most Endangered Species