A collection of pictures, videos, news and facts about animals and their habitats.
Posts are those which are submitted or found on external sites as noted.
An endangered Sumatran orangutan carries her baby through branches in the forest of Bukit Lawang, part of the vast Leuser national park, on Indonesia’s Sumatra island. Alarm is growing at a plan that would open up new swaths of forest to mining, palm oil and paper companies, and could put orangutans and other critically endangered species at even greater risk
Photograph: Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images
(Source: Guardian)
Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA) has cleared Borneo’s rainforest for miles, with total disregard for the well-being of the orangutans and other primates living there.International Animal Rescue Indonesia (IAR) staff has found a few traumatized and starving orangutans remaining in the ruins, one clinging to what’s left of a tree and others wandering among the stumps. Others, they say, are trapped there and starving as well.
Starving orangutans are being rescued from a forest after bulldozers destroyed their home. Among those saved from the brink of death were a pregnant female and a mother and baby who refused to let go of each other during the horrific ordeal. The orangutans were found clinging to the last few remaining trees when the Indonesian forest they were living in was bulldozed to make way for an palm oil plantation.
Picture: Caters News Agency
Two wild Sumatran elephants eat palm oil leaves in a private palm oil plantation in East Aceh, Indonesia.
Photograph: S. ADITYA/AFP/Getty Images
(Source: Guardian)
Click through for larger images and captions.
Bornean orangutan rescued with 104 air gun pellet wounds – in pictures
A female Bornean orangutan named Aan, rescued from an oil plantation in the Indonesian part of Borneo where she had been roaming for over a month, has survived an operation to remove 32 of the 104 air gun pellets in her body
Saving a baby Orangutan, Part 2 - Orangutan Diary - BBC
(Source: youtube.com)
Saving a baby Orangutan, Part 1 - Orangutan Diary - BBC
(Source: youtube.com)
A young male orangutan takes its first steps into the wild after years of being kept as an illegal pet by oil palm plantation workers. The ape was released into Bukit Batikap Conservation Forest by rescuers and carers from Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation.Picture: Iwan Pribadi / Rex Features
Answer:
Of course.
I’ll leave it here so others can too.
#subway #palm oilGreen desert - Film HD
An average European has never been so responsible for the devastation of tropical rainforests as he is today. What is the cause and how can we prevent it?
The answer provides a documentary movie by Michal Galik, which takes us to the other end of the planet, on the tropical island of Borneo. The film reveals startling secrets that lie behind a widely spread and daily used ingredient - palm oil.
Please watch and share.
(Source: youtube.com)
Leuser, the Sumatran orangutan shot 62 times – in pictures
A moving story of an orangutan who was rescued from being sold as a gift, reintroduced to the wild only to be captured again by villagers who shot him repeatedly for fun
Leuser, a blind Sumatran orangutan has survived poachers, air rifles, and deforestation during his 13 years of life. Leuser has been saved twice by theSumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP), but now resides in captivity at their quarantine centre in Medan, Sumatra, after being shot 62 times by villagers seeking entertainment
Leuser was first brought to the Medan quarantine centre in February 2004 after being intercepted by an SCOP team en route to Jakarta, where he was going to be taken as a gift. After several months of reintroduction training at a release site on the edge of Jambi’s Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, Central Sumatra, he returned to the wild in December 2004
Orangutans like Leuser are under threat in Indonesia, where their habitat has been cleared for illegal palm oil plantations. The Tripa peat swamp forests support the highest density of Sumatran orangutans in the world, but numbers may be down to 6,000 because of illegal activities
Two years later Leuser was captured by villagers near Jambi’s Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in central Sumatra. He was found by a SOCP veterinary team in a very bad condition, with a 40cm cut on his right leg and 62 air rifle pellets in his body, including in both eyes, rendering him blind
Leuser was found by the SCOP to be an excellent nest builder and forger during his reintroduction training in 2004, now he will never able to return to the wild
Leuser was sent back to Medan where the SCOP team managed to remove 14 of the 62 pellets in his body. The villagers told SCOP they wanted to capture the orangutan to sell it, but the ground team suspected they shot Leuser for fun. Five villagers were prosecuted and sentenced to six months’ jail
There was a small silver lining in captivity. In June 2010, Leuser was introduced to another blind orangutan, Gober, who had lost her sight from cataracts. In July, after they were separated, Gober was showing signs pregnancy
On the 21 January 2011, Gober gave birth to twins, one male and one female
Leuser’s legacy continues: on 24 April NGO’s from all over the world met in Jakarta, the countries capital, to discuss the future of the Tripa peat swamp forests. Sumatran orangutans could be lost for ever if laws are not enforced to protect Tripa’s remaining forests immediately
Because of trapping, hunting, and deforestation, wild orangutan populations have fallen 70 percent over the last 60 years.
When I found Max, he couldn’t walk. He was disorientated and terrified, and the burns to his feet and body were severe. He was one of several hundred orangutans displaced by forest clearing outside Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park in 2006. He had become separated from his family after plantation workers cruelly herded escaping orangutans back to the burning jungle—and away from precious plantation land.
No more than one year old, Max had fought successfully against the trapping, hunting and forest clearing industries that endangered his short life. But with one last breath, he finally lost his battle, becoming one of several thousand orangutans killed annually by a barbaric agricultural farming process, and becoming a victim of a different kind of oil spill: the trade in palm oil.
Palm oil monoculture is “palming” off orangutans in giant numbers, pushing the once abundant species closer than ever to extinction. Today, less than 60,000 orangutans exist in the wild and scientists and biologists conclude that the species’ numbers have disappeared by more than 70 percent over the last 60 years as a combined result of trapping, hunting, and deforestation.
Read whole article here
Vets examine an injured Sumatran orangutan found by environmental activists at a palm oil plantation in Aceh province, Indonesia. Conservationists say fires in an Indonesian swamp forest may have killed one-third of the rare Sumatran orangutans living there
Photograph: Binsar Bakkara, File/AP
Conservationists say hundreds of Indonesian great apes could be killed within weeks if land-clearing fires continue.
Hundreds of critically endangered orangutans in western Indonesia could be wiped out “within weeks” if palm oil companies continue to set land-clearing fires in their peat swamp forests, conservationists say.
“We are currently watching a global tragedy”
- Ian Singleton, director of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program
Ian Singleton, a conservation director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, said on Thursday that the population of great apes was “just barely hanging on”.
“It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears,” Singleton said.
The population of Sumatran orangutans, who live in the Tripa forest on the coast of Aceh province, have decreased from about 3,000 in the 1990s to only about 200.
The forest is the most dense population of Sumatran orangutans in the world, with eight individuals per each square kilometre.
Although the forest is officially protected, almost half of the trees, that half a century ago blanketed almost three-quarters of Indonesia in plush tropical rain forest, have been cleared in the rush to supply the world with pulp, paper and, more recently, palm oil - used to make everything from lipstick and soap to “clean-burning” fuel.
Villagers in Borneo work to restore a disappearing canopy of trees where orangutans live [Al Jazeera/Steve Chao]
Singleton said that fires had sent orangutans fleeing, while some risked being captured or killed by residents.
Others orangutans would simply die, either directly in the fires, or of gradual starvation and malnutrition as their food resources disappear, he said.
“We are currently watching a global tragedy,” said Singleton.
Cloud-free images from December show only 12,267 hectares of Tripa’s original 60,000 hectares (148,260 acres) of forest remains, said Graham Usher of the Foundation of a Sustainable Ecosystem.
The rest has been broken up and degraded as palm oil companies drain the swamp, said Singleton.
He said that a total of 92 fire hot spots were recorded between March 19 and 25 in several of the surrounding plantations.
