Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia. (Photo: Saeed Khan, AFP)

Countdown to Extinction Has Begun For the Orangutan, Experts Warn

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The world has less than 20 years left to save the orangutan, according to conservationists who predict the charismatic red ape will become extinct if no action is taken to protect its jungle habitat.

There are thought to be 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans still living in the wild in Malaysia and Indonesia, but deforestation and the expansion of palm oil plantations have taken a heavy toll.

“The orangutans’ habitat is fragmented and isolated by plantations, they can’t migrate, they can’t find mates to produce babies,” said Tsubouchi Toshinori, from the Borneo Conservation Trust.

Environmentalists are calling for the creation of “corridors” to link the scraps of jungle where orangutans have become trapped by decades of encroachment by loggers and palm oil firms.

Tsubouchi said that although studies have predicted orangutans will disappear within 50 years if their habitat continues to vanish, action needs to be taken within the next two decades to stall that process.

“We have to establish the corridors in 10 or 20 years, otherwise we won’t be able to do anything later,” he said.

Some 80 percent of the world’s orangutans live in Borneo, which is split between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the rest are found in Sumatra.

“What we have left today is maybe only 10 percent of what we used to have before,” said Marc Ancrenaz, from the environmental group Hutan, which focuses on conserving the 11,000 orangutans in Malaysia’s Sabah state in Borneo.

An aerial survey carried out by Hutan and wildlife authorities in Sabah last year revealed some 1,000 orangutan treetop “nests” located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.

“If we are not able to establish connectivity in the next 10 or 20 years, there is a risk that this population will reach a stage which will make it impossible for us to enable them to survive,” Ancrenaz warned.

But he said that if immediate action is taken, there is still a good chance of ensuring the long-term survival of the primate because there is still enough genetic diversity for it to thrive.

“Unlike the rhinoceros, whose numbers are so few, we still have a decent size population for the orangutan. If they are going to become extinct, it will not be in the next 10 years,” he said.

There are only about 250 Sumatran rhinoceroses left in Malaysia and Indonesia, making it the most highly endangered rhino species in the world.

Experts say that wildlife corridors would enable orangutans to move across the fragmented landscape and alongside rivers to seek food and mates.

The corridors could be used by other endangered species such as the pygmy elephant and rhinoceros, but progress on the initiative has been slow.

The Malaysian palm oil industry, often criticized for its poor environmental performance, pledged to fund the corridors at an October conference but nothing has yet been done. The chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Yusof Basiron, said he was waiting for environmentalists to advise how much land would be needed, and denied that lack of action was threatening the species’ future.

Eric Meijaard, who studies orangutans in Indonesia, said the situation was even worse there and that deforestation was responsible for the loss of up to 3,000 orangutans a year in Borneo.

“If we are losing them at the rate that we are losing now, they are going to be pretty much gone in 15 to 20 years,” said the ecologist from the Indonesia-based People and Nature Consulting International.

“In Indonesia, the whole process of conversion is still very rampant and the land use changes very fast — what is still a natural forest concession today may be a plantation tomorrow.”



Agence France-Press