Orangutans, like most of the world’s great apes, are struggling. Their numbers continue to drop as their habitat disappears, or they’re killed by humans for food, out of fear or for self-defense. And it’s happening despite an estimated $1 billion in spending on concerted orangutan conservation efforts since 2000. The ongoing slide has left biologists […]
Tag: Bornean orangutan
As Indonesia paints rosy picture for orangutans, scientists ask: Where’s the data?
Dutch biologist Erik Meijaard isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers. In the past 15 years, he’s published some 120 opinion pieces in Indonesian newspapers, many of them critical about the state of conservation in the biodiversity-rich country. But even Meijaard didn’t expect his latest article, which challenged government claims that orangutans in the Southeast Asian nation […]
Lean times leave orangutans wasting away. Habitat loss makes things worse
JAKARTA — Orangutans in Borneo have been found to physically waste away when fruit is scarce — a finding with dire implications as human-driven climate change and the destruction of their habitat put their food supply under even greater threat. In a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers collected and analyzed urine […]
Orangutan Confiscations Hit All Time High Due to Covid
During the past two months, The Orangutan Project has seen a significant increase in confiscations of orangutans that were being illegally kept as pets, the organization reports. The organization has worked with partners and authorities to rescue eight critically endangered orangutans. After being rescued, the orangutans are rehabilitated and given another chance to live in […]
Increased Poaching of Critically Endangered Orangutans During Pandemic
“Critically endangered orangutans, tigers, elephants and subsistence farmers, are now all struggling to survive in remnant forests,” said Leif Cocks, founder of The Orangutan Project, in an emailed statement. “Over 80% of native forest in Sumatra and Borneo have been cleared for large plantations. When you add in a global pandemic which has plunged more […]
A dedicated team of Malaysian rangers and veterinarians is part of global movement to rescue and preserve rainforest species
As Malaysians were in total lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, a sweet-natured baby elephant named Sahabat was found wandering near an oil palm plantation. Nearly blind from severe eye infections, he had become separated from his herd. In Malaysia’s Sabah state, the Wildlife Rescue Unit (WRU) swooped to the rescue. Thousands anxiously followed Sahabat’s story […]
Palm Oil Deforestation: A Threat to Orangutan Populations, Indigenous People and Biodiversity
The California fires in November 2018 were more severe than ever and yet – the amount of forest that was lost in the combined fires makes up only a fraction of Indonesian forest that is burned every year in slash-and-burn practices to clear palm oil plantations. In 2015 alone,the area of Indonesian forest burned was […]
Where the logging ends in Indonesian Borneo, the forest clearing begins
Logging for timber by definition reduces tree cover. But what happens when logging stops? Anew study has found that in concessions where timber firms have stopped operating, deforestation actually appears to increase, thanks to illegal clearing for agriculture and industrial plantations. An inactive logging concession therefore creates a conservation risk, but also a conservation opportunity, […]