80% Of Orangutan Habitat Has Already Been Depopulated Or Totally Destroyed - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

When I first arrived in Central Kalimantan in 1971, orangutans were already endangered because of poaching (for the pet trade and for the cooking pot) and deforestation (by loggers and by villagers making way for gardens and rice fields). But it was all relatively small-time. The forests of Kalimantan were vast — Indonesia’s are the second largest tropical rain forests in the world, after Brazil’s — and forest conversion rates small. People still used axes and saws to cut down trees and traveled by dugout canoes or small boats with inboard engines. I went straight to work, beginning a wild orangutan study that continues to this day, and establishing an orangutan rehabilitation program, the first in Kalimantan, which has returned more than 300 ex-captive orangutans to the wild.

But the wild is increasingly difficult to find. In the late 1980s, as it entered the global economy, Indonesia decided to become a major producer and exporter of palm oil, pulp and paper. Before this, the government had endorsed selective logging. Now vast areas of forest were slated for conversion to plantations to grow trees for palm oil and paper production. Monster-sized bulldozers, replacing the chain saws of the early logging boom, tore up the forest, clear-cutting as many as 250,000 acres at once for palm oil plantations. At the same time, the price of wood, particularly the valuable hardwoods that grow in Indonesia’s rain forests and fetch a high price on the black market, increased. Illegal logging became rampant, even in national parks and reserves.

While illegal logging degrades the forest, plantations absolutely destroy it. And the destruction is not only immediate, but also long-term. Forest-clearing leaves huge amounts of dry branches and other wood litter on forest floors; a small spark can ignite enormous forest fires, particularly in times of drought. During the 1997 El Niño drought, approximately 25 million acres, an area about half the size of Oklahoma, burned in Indonesia. Thousands of orangutans died.

Indonesia has achieved its goal of becoming one of the two largest palm-oil producers and exporters in the world. But at what cost? At least half of the world’s wild orangutans have disappeared in the last 20 years; biologically viable populations of orangutans have been radically reduced in size and number; and 80 percent of the orangutan habitat has either been depopulated or totally destroyed. The trend shows no sign of abating: government maps of future planned land use show more of the same, on an increasing scale.

EDIT

http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=66110

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Some go by the adopted name of "Bush"

which could account for not being found under "orangutan".

[Robson]

2. Too many of us

The basic problem with the environment is there are way too many humans sucking up the Earth's resources and emitting pollutants. The Earth's population has gone from 2 billion to over 6 billion in about 40-45 years. We have too many people on a boat and it becomes unstable and unsupportable and unsustainable. Combine that with business that is unwilling to pay the necessary overhead to even begin to keep our heads above water and it looks like a losing cause.

Until population growth and economic growth become really bad words, mother nature and mother earth are going to be stressed. Somehow we need to acclimatize our economies to zero growth. For our sakes I hope Mother Earth doesn't throw a hissy fit (super volcanic eruptions, weather extremes, major plagues, etc) in an effort to straighten things out.

At least China had the foresight to limit birth rate or we'd be in real trouble.

But what do I know?

[Dean Martin]

3. that's why

We should have had colonies in space by now. We need to get off of this rock. At some point we're going to have to leave earth, and I fear we won't be ready. I fear those in charge will just sit here on their butts waiting for the end times and when the end times really come in the form of the planet imploding, mankind will be caught in the path, and we'll take the rest of nature with us, and it will be our fault due to our destructive ways.

Failing that, we should have heeded the warnings years ago and stopped destroying everything. Scientists have been warning for decades that we are destroying our resources but we won't listen.