Orangutans Face Extinction in 20 Years

[leyna]

LONDON (Reuters) - Orangutans face extinction in as little as 20 years because of logging and poaching, the conservation group WWF-UK said Monday.

"Borneo and Sumatra, home to the world's last orangutans, have lost a staggering 91 percent of their populations over the past 100 years," WWF-UK said in a statement.

"There are now fewer than 30,000 orangutans left and it is likely that they will become extinct in the wild in as little as 20 years' time if this decline continues," it added.

Almost 80 percent of the orangutans' forest habitat in Malaysia and Indonesia has been destroyed by commercial logging and clearance for oil-palm plantations.

Hunting and poaching for bush meat and the pet trade are adding to the decline in numbers of the great ape.

The WWF is working to extend sanctuaries where logging and hunting are banned, but 60 percent of orangutans currently live outside the protection of the reserves.

"It will be a long-term effort that will cost millions but we must act now to save orangutans, which are not only a critical part of the food chain but an icon in the region," Francis Sullivan, WWF-UK's Director of Conservation told Reuters.


http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20040112/mdf444837.jpg

[jenzie]

That's so tragic. :cry:

[Oatmeal Girl]

I saw that, too. It made me sad- thinking of King Louie on the Jungle Book, gone for good.

You know what's even more sad? No one will take responsibility for this, or change their ways to prevent it from happening. Ugh.

[bearhino]

i need to get into animal conservation. thats awfull i bet they make a comeback though.

:angry2:

[Oatmeal Girl]

I posted this on a journal on a site I go on, and someone messaged me and said that the WWF conducts some of the largest animal experiments in the world, and he directed me to the link thats on PETA. I was so disappointed- how can you justify harming caged animals to help wild animals?

[iamtheqbu]

Depressing... :cry:

"...WWF conducts some of the largest animal experiments in the world..."

Yeah, I heard that about WWF too. I stopped sending them money, but I do try to support other smaller more grass roots wildlife/environmental organizations instead. I have the same general opinion of WWF as I do of PETA, some of the work they do is good but some of the things they do are stupid/harmful and therefore I choose to not support them directly (with money or anything like that). But they both are a good source of information if you look hard enough. Just my early-morning-coffee-fed two cents.

[bluedawg]

here's an update (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17008098/) (still depressing):

Orangutans face 'emergency,' U.N. reports
Indonesia blames multinational logging networks with armed mercenaries

Updated: 2 hours, 44 minutes ago

NAIROBI, Kenya - Rampant illegal logging is destroying the tropical forests of Southeast Asia far quicker than had been feared, with dire impact on endangered orangutans and other wildlife, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Without urgent action, 98 percent of remaining forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo could be gone by 2022, with serious consequences for local people and wildlife including rhinos, tigers and elephants, the U.N. report said.

"The situation is now acute for the orangutans," whose habitat has been reduced to areas in Sumatra and Borneo, said the report by U.N. Environment Program experts.

"The rapid rate of removal of food trees, killing of orangutans displaced by logging and plantation development, and fragmentation of remaining intact forest, constitutes a conservation emergency."

The world body blamed a shadowy network of multinational firms for increasingly targeting Indonesian national parks as one of the few remaining sources of commercial timber supplies.

'Do not buy uncertified wood'
Indonesia made a plea for Western consumers to reject smuggled timber.

"We are appealing today to the conscience of the whole world: do not buy uncertified wood," Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's environment minister, said on the fringes of a major U.N. environment meeting in Kenya.

He said illegal logging was ravaging 37 of his country's 41 national parks, and now accounted for more than 73 percent of all logging in Indonesia.

"It is not being done by individual impoverished people, but by well-organized elusive commercial networks," said Achim Steiner, head of the UNEP.

Indonesia's government has deployed the military on at least three occasions in recent years to confiscate timber and chase loggers out of its parks — and has begun training quick response ranger teams to police protected areas.

But experts say the new units remain crippled by a lack of funds, vehicles, weapons and equipment, and face a huge threat from ruthless loggers, who are often protected by heavily armed militia commanded by foreign mercenaries.

Fires, farmers also a problem
Combined with forest fires, encroachment by farmers on their dwindling habitat and poaching, illegal logging is having a devastating impact on orangutans, which once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across Southeast Asia.

The U.N. report, which was compiled using new satellite images and Indonesian government data, said orangutan habitat was being lost 30 percent quicker than was previously feared.

It was estimated in 2002 that there were about 60,000 of the shaggy ginger primates left in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. Some ecologists say the number has now been halved and others say the species could be extinct in 20 years.

A month ago, the European Union and Indonesia agreed to negotiate a pact aimed at ending illegal logging by providing guarantees forest products imported to the EU are verified as legal. The EU is the third largest market for Indonesian timber after China and the United States.

Washington and Indonesia signed a similar pact last year.

But experts say the amount of investment in the logging companies from the industrialized world vastly outstrips donor efforts to help Jakarta combat the illegal practice.

[quagga]

So sad...we had paradise and we've totally screwed it up. Totally.

ETA: and not just for the orangutans, but also for the polar bears, the whales, the fishes, the migratory birds and insects whose safe havens are slowly, inexorably being eaten away...
ETA: and sloths, too. critters whose modus operandi is NOT moving!

All in increments.

Until some of us wake up and we wonder where everything went. Some of us wake up and fight like hell. Some of us wake up and feel despair at the massiveness of the destruction. Others never wake up at all.

And others will be born into into a world where there was never any paradise in the first place.

Where did I put that rock? I want to go hide under it, please.

ETA: I don't usually let stuff get to me (I can't bear to read the polar bear thread, but for some reason this is just one more bit of bad news about the wild perfect world that I just can't take.