Live
Audio Only
The destruction of Borneo’s forests for the production of palm oil and agricultural development, along with the impact of climate change, is believed to be driving the orangutan into near extinction on Asia’s largest island, a new United Nations report revealed Wednesday.
"The current policies for land conversion on Borneo are simply unsustainable," said Serge Wich, lead author of the report. "Our models show that the effects will worsen over time, leading to greater and greater loss of suitable land, not just for orangutans, but for the human population as well."
The report projects that over 80 percent of the orangutan's remaining habitat in Borneo could be lost by the year 2080 if the island's current land-use policies remain intact.
An estimated 55,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. However, orangutans' solitary nature and slow reproductive rates leave them particularly vulnerable to rapid deforestation rates.
The UNEP findings also coincide with the conclusions from a separate report conducted by the World Wildlife Fund which identified the islands of Borneo and Sumatra as among the most vulnerable regions of the world to large-scale forest cover loss over the next two decades
"It is clear that a future without sustainable development will be a future with a different climate and, eventually, without orangutans, one of our closest relatives," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner stated.
Burning rainforests on Borneo and Sumatra to make space for palm oil plantations is one of the greatest threats to orangutans. | Photo: United Nations
Newsletter
