Deforestation occurs for a multitude of reasons: mostly in managed forests which are harvested for wood, but more controversially it happens in areas of high biodiversity, to clear space to graze livestock or grow extensive monocultures such as the trees grown for palm oil. There is growing concern about the loss of habitat for native species in Indonesia, most famously the poster-primate representing this habitat loss: the orang-utan.
These striking red primates have been persecuted for the oil that can be extracted from the fruit which grows on the trees in palm plantations.
A female orang-utan and her baby (Microsoft Clipart, 2018)
Many of the adult female orang-utans, naturally prone to aggression when their habitat is cleared and their young threatened, are shot, leaving their vulnerable, orphaned offspring alone. When observing orang-utans at London Zoo, Darwin said that he could see their ‘passion and rage, sulkiness, and the very actions of despair’ (Bekoff, 2007). Orang-utans are normally quite solitary, coming together only for breeding and then the female rears her young alone. Manning and Dawkins (2017) explain how the females’ territories overlap but they tend to avoid each other. By taking over the land that was once dense forest, those farming palm trees are not only destroying habitat, but causing in most cases irreparable damage to the societial structure of these apes.
But what can be done?
A report by Neme (2014) about shifts in the palm oil market’s effects on orang-utans, stated that ‘commitments need more specifics, including the definition of forests to be preserved, tighter implementation deadlines, and provisions for independent verification’. In her report she describes how in some situations forests are being heavily mismanaged despite apparently being overseen by the Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) endorsed companies. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and RSPO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (…) that aimed to raise the global awareness of sustainable palm oil’ (UNEP, 2014) This suggested that, perhaps with the two organisations working together, sustainability of palm oil in the future would become easier to govern. In 2016 UNEP produced a further report, The Palm Oil Paradox, which aimed to find ways of working through the palm oil issue and create a truly sustainable way of farming palm fruits, including the use of wildlife corridors between plantations.
Amid the politics, of course, are the displaced primate victims. The Orang-utan Foundation, an organisation that rescues and rehabilitates orang-utans in Indonesia, gauge whether an animal is well enough to be immediately relocated, or whether it is too young and will require support until it is old enough for release. Over the past ten years they have ‘recorded more than forty births to reintroduced orang-utans in the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve’ (The Orang-utan Foundation, 2018), demonstrating there are pockets of recovery in the wild.
But the eviction of animals from their natural habitat continues, with International Animal Rescue (n.d.) explaining that 2.5 million acres of land are lost every year. They go on to explain the fate of the orang-utans, in that if young they are often ‘illegally sold as pets’. Older orang-utans find their way into the care of Non Government Organisations (NGOs) when they are discovered in cages as pets, no doubt a product of the pet trade in baby orang-utans; older orang-utans who have managed to avoid the gun are simply displaced and left to roam in a land that is no longer their own, sometimes starving to death.
The current situation is such that the orang-utan is on the critically endangered red list managed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2018). The IUCN states that the population of the Borneo orang-utan reduced by 60% in the years from 1950-2010. It seems it is going to take the urgent work of a multitude of government bodies and NGOs to rescue the orang-utan from extinction in the wild.
References
Bekoff, M. (2007). ‘The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy – and Why They Matter.’ New World Library, California, USA. (p33).
International Animal Rescue (n.d.) ‘What We’re Doing: Orang-utan Rescue’. [Online]. Available at: https://www.internationalanimalrescue.org/protecttheforest?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhs69ifvx3QIVSbXtCh0y0w9KEAAYASAAEgJa8PD_BwE (Accessed 06/10/18).
IUCN (2016). ‘The IUCN List of Threatened Species: Pongo pygmaeus’ – Last updated 2016. [Online]. Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/17975/0 (Accessed 06/10/18).
Neme, L. ( 2014), ‘Endangered Orang-utans Gain From Eco-Friendly Shifts in Palm Oil Market’ in National Geographic 11th October 2014, [Online], available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141009-orang-utans-palm-oil-malaysia-indonesia-tigers-rhinos/, (Accessed 05/10/18).
Manning, A. and Dawkins, M.S. (2017). ’An Introduction to Animal Behaviour’ 6th Ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom (p393).
Orang-utan Foundation (The) (2018). Orang-utan Reintroduction: Why it’s Needed and How it’s Done’. [Online]. Available at: http://www.orang-utan.org.uk/about-orang-utans/orang-utan-reintroduction (Accessed 05/10/18).
RSPO, (n.d.). ‘The Round Table Sustainable Palm Oil : Who we are’, [online], available at: http://www.rspo.org/about/who-we-are, (Accessed 05/10/18).
UNEP, (2014). ‘UNEP and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Sign New Agreement’, 14/11/14, [Online], available at: http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2812&ArticleID=11071 (Accessed 04/10/18).
UNEP (2016). ‘Palm Oil Paradox: Sustainable Solutions to Save the Great Apes’, United Nations Environmental Programme. [Online]. Avaialbale at: http://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/14869/GRASP%20Palm%20Oil%20Paradox.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (Accessed 06/10/18) (p6).
Animals and Humanity 