World's largest wild orangutan population to extinct in 3 years

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A baby orangutan on Indonesia's Borneo island. Photo: EFE

The world's largest population of wild orangutans on Indonesia's Borneo island faces extinction within three years due to rapidly expanding oil palm plantations, a conservationist group said Wednesday.

A report by the Centre for Orangutan Protection said just 20-thousand of the endangered primates remain in the tropical jungle of Central Kalimantan, down from 31,300 in 2004.

If the government does not protect wildlife from commercial exploitation, illegal logging and poachers, orangutans there could be extinct by 2011, said Hardi Baktiantoro, the group's head. "The Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) has predicted that in 2 or 3 years from now, those orangutans living outside conservation area in Central Kalimantan will be extinct. Because the government is really active to open up land for large palm oil plantations at this moment", said Baktiantoro.

Adding to the problem is a plan by Indonesian authorities to open up 1.1 million acres (455,000 hectares) - an area larger than the US state of Rhode Island, of protected land for palm oil growers, he said. "The cutting down of forests means the loss of habitat and source of food for orangutans. Orangutans will become homeless and starve. They will resort to eating palm oil seeds, which is causing them to be hunted and captured. They are treated as pests", said Baktiantoro.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced a major initiative to save the nation's orangutans at the Bali Climate Conference last year, but it appears the plan has not received sufficient political support.

The Forestry Ministry's for wildlife protection has said government programs to save the environment are hampered by a lack of funds and lack of knowledge about conservation.