These heartbreaking images show endangered orangutans made homeless as farmers jeopardise their habitat. The pictures show a troop of these magnificent creatures gathered near water at their reserve on Salat Island, Borneo, after being driven from wooded areas by illegal land clearing. Satellites show that the number of such blazes across Borneo and Sumatra are […]
Tag: Orangutan
A tiger refuge in Sumatra gets a reprieve from road building
The rainforests that once carpeted Indonesia’s Sumatra Island are among the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems, home to iconic species like the Sumatran tiger, rhino and orangutan. They are also among the most imperiled; in just two decades, between 1990 and 2010, Sumatra lost 40 percent of its old-growth forest. The tigers, rhinos and orangutans that […]
Halting Deforestation and Protecting Orangutans in Indonesia
Recent studies have indicated that expansion of our planet’s forests is a critical step toward mitigating climate change. This, along with conservation of our existing forests, specifically ones that host a large amount of biodiversity – like rainforests – is more important than ever. The rainforests of Indonesian Borneo house millions of tons of carbon […]
Orangutan population falls by 25 every day — and food we eat is to blame
He may be King of the Swingers, the jungle VIP, but King Louie and his friends will be no more if man continues its relentless and greedy march of destruction. Alarming new figures show that the orangutan population is falling by 25 every day. Monday is World Orangutan Day and animal lovers are asked to […]
Orangutan numbers drop as much as 30 per cent in Malaysian palm oil estate forests
The number of endangered orangutans living in forest patches found in oil palm estates in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah fell as much as 30 per cent between 2002 and 2017, but the overall population of the species in the area is stable, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Thursday. Their […]
Pregnant orang-utan pictured clinging to final tree as bulldozers destroy rainforest around her
A starving, heavily pregnant orang-utan clings to a solitary tree high above what had been pristine rainforest for millennia – till giant bulldozers moved in and flattened it in days. Boon-Mee was too weak and frightened to leave the trunk where she had sought sanctuary as the machines tore down her jungle home in Borneo, […]
Video: Documentary on world’s rarest ape generates film festival buzz
JAKARTA — Inspired by an article on Mongabay, a documentary film on the world’s rarest and most threatened great ape species is now racking up awards on the international film festival circuit. Now Or Never is a 25-minute film directed and produced by U.K.-based Matt Senior that tells the story of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo […]
The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
In 1982, an orangutan researcher working in Indonesian Borneo wrote to a colleague at the biology department at the National University in Jakarta. He told of meeting a traditional-medicine trader at the market in Pangkalan Bun, a city in Central Kalimantan province. “A whole Sumatran rhino head is immersed in coconut oil in a basin,” […]