What can Half or Whole Earth conservation strategies do for orangutans?

What can Half or Whole Earth conservation strategies do for orangutans?

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 […]

Read More

As Indonesia paints rosy picture for orangutans, scientists ask: Where’s the data?

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 […]

Read More

Where the logging ends in Indonesian Borneo, the forest clearing begins

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, […]

Read More

Orangutan found shot, hacked at palm plantation with history of deaths

Orangutan found shot, hacked at palm plantation with history of deaths

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia are investigating the killing of a rare orangutan whose body was found riddled with bullet and knife wounds in an oil palm plantation with a history of orangutan deaths. Workers at the plantation in Seruyan district, in the Bornean province of Central Kalimantan, pulled the badly decomposed corpse […]

Read More

Bornean orangutan declared ‘critically endangered’ as forests shrink

Bornean orangutan declared ‘critically endangered’ as forests shrink

The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is now critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This change means that both species of orangutan now face an “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.” “This is full acknowledgement of what has been clear for a long time: orangutan conservation is failing,” […]

Read More