Saving the Orangutan

[Guest guest]

Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

BOS UK Saving the Orangutan

 

 

 

know more about this issue and how to help save them:

http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/

 

* * *

 

 

BOS UK - Saving the Orangutan

The Orangutan is one of man's closest relatives, but man's activities have

left the Orangutan in danger of extinction. Over the last century their

population

has dwindled by 90%, while approximately 80% of their habitat has been lost

during

the last 20 years.

 

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) is a not-for-profit foundation.

BOS

works under an official agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry for

the

conservation of Orangutans and their ecosystem by involving and educating the

local

people.

 

Find out more about Orangutans and their plight on this website and help us help

them by becoming a BOS member or by simply giving a donation to BOS.

 

 

 

Orangutans

" Their eyes hold a story that is indecipherable and yet intuitively we relate

to them. Just one look into those eyes and you are hooked. "

 

Orangutans are highly intelligent with an ability to reason and think. This

large,

gentle red ape is one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of the same DNA as

humans.

Indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia call this ape " Orang Hutan "

literally translating into English as " People of the Forest " .

 

In times past they would not kill them because they felt the orangutan was

simply

a person hiding in the trees, trying to avoid having to go to work or become a

slave.

 

Orangutans are unique in the ape world. There are four kinds of great apes:

gorillas,

chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. Only the orangutan comes from Asia; the

others

all come from Africa. There are two separate species of orangutan - the Sumatran

orangutan (Pongo abelii) and the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) Orangutans

are

only found on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

 

The orangutan is the only strictly arboreal ape and is actually the largest tree

living mammal in the world. The rest of the apes do climb and build sleeping

nests

in the trees, but are primarily terrestrial (spending their lives on the

ground).

Even the hair color of the orangutan, a bright reddish brown, is unique in the

ape

world.

 

 

 

 

Orangutan Threats

Why does the orangutan need our help? Orangutans are one of the most critically

endangered of the great apes, due to poaching and habitat loss. Based on the

World

Bank's estimation that mechanized logging in the Kalimantan forest, (Indonesian

Borneo), will result in its total loss by 2010, and other statistics stating

that

wild orangutans are disappearing at a rate of 5,000 orangutans per year,

optimistic

predictions give the orangutan ten more years before extinction in the wild.

 

A crisis exists for the orangutan

Never before has its very existence been threatened so severely. Economic crisis

combined with natural disasters and human abuse of the forest are pushing our

closest

cousins to extinction. They have lost approximately 80% of their habitat in the

last 20 years. We lost approximately 1/3 of the wild population of orangutans

during

the fires of '97-'98. There are approximately 12,000 to 15,000 orangutans

remaining in Borneo (compared to about 20,000 in 1996) and approximately 4,000

to

6,000 left in Sumatra (compared to about 10,000 in 1996).

 

The threats to the survival of the orangutan are numerous and difficult to

remedy.

 

These include:

 

1.. Loss of Habitat

2.. Poaching

3.. The illegal pet/zoo trade

 

 

 

 

know more about this issue and how to help save them:

http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/

 

 

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always

glorify the hunter