disappearing : 04-orang-utans

Our grandchildren may never see the Orangutans. Their lives are threatened by different things.

In the issue there's an interesting article by the author Michael Morpurgo. Two basic things. First, they are living mostly in Sumatra and Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia). Second, they are slow growing species (the females can only have baby every eight years - 4/5 in a lifetime).

A lot of babies are kidnapped and then enter to the conservation parks (=zoo) or to the private houses as pets. The second and biggest problem is the oil palm plantations (much of them illegal) which are invading the orangutan's tropical forest leaving them without home. I didn't know that palm oil is important but seems like it is. "Palm oil is found in one in 10 supermarket products from chocolate to toothpaste", in addition, demand for palm oil is rising and is expected to climb further, particularly for use in biodiesel which is promoted as a form of renewable energy that greatly reduces net emissions of carbon dioxide. Damn, not every renewable energy is fully justified.

So, there are 60,000 orangutans in the world and 5,000 are dying each year.

Result: the speed at which we are killing orangutans is outrunning the speed with which they can breed.

Definitely apes in general are not my favorite animals but I have a mug cup with Orangutan and I'm seeing him everyday. It's silly but I don't want another painting on that cup, it would be sad if he disappeared from there. I don't want him to be like "once this animal existed". But like Michael Morpurgo states, "it's not just a shame or a pity - it's about whether there will be a planet at all in 300 or 500 years. If the market continues to dominate, there won't be".

In Malay and Indonesian words, orang means person and hutan means forest, "man of the forest". It doesn't need to be inteligent to deduce that, without hutan, there will not any orang.