Orangutan Day highlights plight of world's great apes

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) has released ten Bornean orangutans back into the jungle to mark World Orangutan Day.

They are among hundreds of red apes that have been saved by BOSF. Since 2012, it has released 368 rehabilitated orangutans back to the wild.

Over the past century, orangutan populations in Southeast Asia have seen a very steep decline, driven to the brink of extinction by a host of man-made threats. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classified Bornean orangutans as critically endangered in 2016 due to rapid population decline caused by destruction of their forest habitat for palm oil and pulp wood plantations. Sumatran orangutans have been classified as critically endangered since 2008.

A new study published earlier this year estimated that the orangutan population on Borneo has dropped by more than 100,000 since 1999. Orangutans are a protected species in Indonesia and Malaysia, but deforestation has dramatically reduced their habitat and brought them into contact with farmers and plantation workers who kill them to protect crops or steal the babies for the pet trade.

Indonesia has lost half of its rain forests in the last half century in its rush to supply the world with timber, pulp, paper and, more recently, palm oil. Palm oil is in around half of all packaged supermarket products from snack foods - like biscuits, chocolate and peanut butter - to soaps, cosmetics and shampoo. It's often listed as vegetable oil, leaving consumers unaware of what products it's contained in. 

The word orangutan means 'person of the forest' in Malay. They share 97 percent of the same DNA as humans and their mothers nurture their children until they are around 8 years old.

Earlier this week, the main global group for certifying sustainable wood suspended plans to give its influential endorsement to Indonesian paper giant Sinarmas after revelations it cut down tropical forests and used an opaque corporate structure to hide its activities.

The Forest Stewardship Council said that it had halted a process that could have enabled the Asia Pulp & Paper arm of Sinarmas to be readmitted to the organization. The group said it is awaiting information from the conglomerate "related to its corporate structure and alleged unacceptable forest management activities" by companies thought related to it and wants full disclosure.

Scientists announced the discovery of the third orangutan species, Pongo tapanuliensis, in November 2017.

To promote World Orangutan Day, the environmental group Greenpeace has launched a short animated story voiced by Dame Emma Thompson, which highlights problems that orangutans face because of deforestation.  

Greenpeace says that Bornean orangutan numbers more than halved between 1999 and 2015 with the loss of approximately 150,000 individuals – more than 25 per day. Greenpeace wants to put pressure on global brands, including Unilever, Nestle and Mondelez, to stop their part in deforestation for palm oil.

They're urging consumers to check food labels and pressure companies to stop using what they call "dirty palm oil" that destroys forests and kills orangutans.

(source: AP)

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