The Bornean orangutan is now critically endangered [ http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/17975/0 ], according to a species assessment published this week by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The animal’s Sumatran cousin, the other species of orangutan, was already listed as critically endangered ? meaning all orangutans are now at “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild [ http://www.iucnredlist.org/static/categories_criteria_3_1 ],” IUCN said.
Kesi, a Bornean orangutan, was found missing a hand in 2006. Rescuers believe her mother was killed and their forest home destroyed. Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation/Orangutan Outreach
Zimmerman believes the infant and her mom encountered humans after their forest home was destroyed to make way for a palm oil plantation. After killing the mother ape, they hacked off the baby’s hand.
“Infant orangutans, who ride on their mothers’ stomachs by holding onto their long hair, have incredibly strong grips. They do not let go,” Zimmerman, whose organization Orangutan Outreach [ https://redapes.org/ ] helps facilitate the rescue and rehabilitation of wild orangutans, told The Huffington Post last year. “The baby’s hand was chopped off — most likely to pry her off her mother.”
Following her rescue, Kesi was successfully rehabilitated [ https://redapes.org/adopt ]. She’s grown into a “strong, dominant female who doesn’t let a missing hand stop her from doing anything,” said Zimmerman. She will one day be released back into the wild.
But Kesi is one of the lucky ones.
According to the IUCN, Bornean orangutan populations have decreased by nearly two-thirds since the early 1970s, and will further decline to an estimated 47,000 animals by 2025. This would represent a decline of more than 86 percent in 75 years, the group said.
Sumatran orangutan [ http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/39780/0 ] populations have also decreased dramatically in the past century. There are fewer than 7,300 individuals from the species left in the wild today.
Sumatran orangutans, photographed in February 2016. Chaideer Mahyuddin/Getty Images
Orangutans live exclusively on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the island of Borneo, which is shared between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
“Orangutans are specialists at living in the forest,” said Robert Shumaker, the Indianapolis Zoo’s vice president of conservation and life sciences. “Without a healthy forest, they simply can’t survive. Generally, orangutans that are displaced and driven out of their home range during the deforestation process have no future and will likely die as a result of their habitat being destroyed.”
Hunting, said the IUCN, is another major threat to orangutan populations.
“If hunting does not stop, all populations that are hunted will decline [id.], irrespective of what happens to their habitat. These findings confirm that habitat protection alone will not ensure the survival of orangutans,” IUCN said.
Orangutans are also slow breeders, making these threats even more grievous. “Females only breed once every 7-8 years, so losing an individual, let alone several, can be catastrophic for a population,” Zimmerman said.
Activists with the Orangutan Information Center (OIC) rescue a tranquilized orangutan from a palm oil plantation in Padang Tualang, North Sumatra, Indonesia, on July 21, 2013. The adult female orangutan was reportedly trapped for several weeks in the palm oil plantation and was isolated from the rest of the surviving orangutan population in the region. Associated Press
Though the orangutans’ future appears hopelessly grim, extinction is not necessarily a “foregone conclusion,” stressed Marshall of the IUCN.
Orangutans are adaptable, he noted. And efforts made by governments and corporations to curb deforestation could have a major impact on the health of forests in Sumatra and Borneo.
The Orangutan King - BBC Natural World Documentary (2004)
The Malay word orangutan means "person of the forest." These long-haired, orangish primates, found only in Sumatra and Borneo, are highly intelligent and are close relatives of humans.
Orangutans have an enormous arm span. A male may stretch his arms some 7 feet (2 meters) from fingertip to fingertip—a reach considerably longer than his standing height of about 5 feet (1.5 meters). When orangutans do stand, their hands nearly touch the ground.
Orangutans' arms are well suited to their lifestyle because they spend much of their time (some 90 percent) in the trees of their tropical rain forest home. They even sleep aloft in nests of leafy branches. They use large leaves as umbrellas and shelters to protect themselves from the common rains.
These cerebral primates forage for food during daylight hours. Most of their diet consists of fruit and leaves gathered from rain forest trees. They also eat bark, insects and, on rare occasions, meat.
Orangutans are more solitary than other apes. Males are loners. As they move through the forest they make plenty of rumbling, howling calls to ensure that they stay out of each other's way. The "long call" can be heard 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) away.
Mothers and their young, however, share a strong bond. Infants will stay with their mothers for some six or seven years until they develop the skills to survive on their own. Female orangutans give birth only once every eight years—the longest time period of any animal. The animals are long-lived and have survived as long as 60 years in captivity.
Because orangutans live in only a few places, and because they are so dependent upon trees, they are particularly susceptible to logging in these areas. Unfortunately, deforestation and other human activities, such as hunting, have placed the orangutan in danger of extinction.