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: Pongo pygmaeus
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 […]
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, […]
Burning and bullets: Forest fires push Bornean orangutans into harm’s way
PONTIANAK, Indonesia — As the forests of Indonesian Borneo burned during fires last year, a female orangutan was forced to leave her burning home. When she was rescued from a small farm, experts found signs of recent pregnancy and wounds on her body. The orangutan, later named Epen by her rescuers, was found foraging at […]
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 […]
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,” […]