Orangutans live in only two places on earth - the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Of all the worlds terrestrial habitats, some of the richest in wildlife are the rainforests found on these islands.
Once, millions of hectares of Sumatra and Borneo were blanketed by lush lowland rainforest. Now, torn down by logging and burned (including peat which locks in CO2) - mostly for palm oil plantations - less than 5% remains.
The massive destruction of orangutan habitat is catastrophic. Some 1.9 million hectares of virgin forest are bulldozed and burned every year (about 8 football fields a minute). Fires rage out of control, adding to global carbon emissions and devouring vast tracts of pristine rainforest. Thousands of animals die in the fires, or are displaced, along with the local communities that also depend on the forest for survival.
Orangutans that do not die in the fires are made to suffer particularly cruelly. Facing starvation they desperately seek food on palm oil plantations, where they are treated as agricultural pests. They are often viciously attacked, tortured and mutilated before being killed. A mother orangutan will defend her baby with her life, so mothers are almost always violently killed and their babies chained up and kept as pets in tiny cages. Many of these tragic orphans end up being traded internationally.
Orangutans are sensitive and intelligent primates. They have the most intense relationship between mother and young of any non-human mammal. In the wild, mother and baby are inseperable for the first five years of life. We share almost 98% of their DNA and live in harmony with their environment.
The species is close to extinction in the wild, an event that will occur within a decade, through human actions. We are all responsible for this, so if we want to save the rainforest and the orangutan, we must all act now.
Palm oil is present in 1 in 10 supermarket products, from chocolate to cosmetics to animal food. Many items labelled simply as vegetable oil actually contain palm oil.
We must avoid buying products containing palm oil - unless it is proven to be from sustainable sources. We must lobby our MPs and MEPs to make it compulsory for UK companies to label the exact type of vegetable oil in products that they sell - we have a right as consumers to know if our weekly shop is contributing to the extermination of orangutans and other wildlife. Write to the leading supermarkets and say that you support them urging their suppliers and manufacturers to use their palm oil only from non destructive sources.
We must all do something.
They just shouldn't be left clutching their babies to their chests, perched in a small island of trees, stranded by a sea of scorched earth - the charred remains of a once luxuriant and irreplaceable tropical rainforest.
One person can make a difference. "Let us remember that we are the consumers.....We have the potential to exert immense power for good - we each carry it with us, in our purses, our cheque books and our credit cards". Jane Goodall, 'A Reason for Hope'.
Orangutans and their rainforest home are too special to lose. It is up to us, the orangutan's closest relative, to stop the fires and the logging, before this charismatic species becomes extinct.
It would be a shameful fact indeed to pass on to our children, that we were the first primate in the known history of our planet to have presided over the genocide of a fellow primate. And all for a bit of vegetable fat.
The best way for just any of us normal people is to support those charities and organisations that are desperately fighting to save what remains of the species. There are links to each on the right hand side menu bar. }:(])
