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Indonesia vows to protect endangered orangutans
Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:42am GMT Reuters
By Sugita Katyal
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia launched a program on Monday to save its dwindling orangutan population, the last of Asia’s great apes, from the brink of extinction by protecting its vast tropical rain forests.
Orangutans once ranged the region, but the shaggy brown primate’s population in Indonesia has been decreasing rapidly as its habitat in Borneo and Sumatra has been disrupted by illegal logging, forest fires and the illegal pet trade.
A recent WWF report said climate change would add to the pressure already caused by human-induced activities such as massive conversion of forests into plantations by reducing the orangutans’ food stock. Thousands will be driven out of forests into villages and plantations to look for food.
“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.
“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.” (more…)