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Orangutans
These animals need your immediate help!
Orangutans are critically endangered and may be extinct by as early as 2020!
Don't let them go forever!
Click here to donate to help save the orangutans and other animals. Get a free "Save the Animals" screensaver.
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Orangutans are easy to like because they seem so human like. When you see a baby orangutan clutching it's mother, you can almost forget for a moment that they are not human.
One human charcteristic that they share is that it takes a long time for the babies to grow up and literally "leave the nest". Unfortunately this also means that when a mother is killed, the baby is left without anyone to teach it how to forge and eat on its own. So the babies die or are captured and sold as "pets". But after a while they grow big and become unruly. Usually they end up being dumped on the outskirts of a city. But by then it is too late because the orangutan never learned to live on its own. It soon dies of starvation - just like a human baby would when left on its own.
As human as orangutans may seem, they are actually wild animals perfectly suited to their forest environment. Weighing in at a hefty 200 pounds, an adult male orangutan is four times as strong as an adult male human and the largest animal to dwell in trees. When climbing on vines, orangutans' flexible hip joints and hand-like feet make them seem to have four arms rather than two arms and two legs.
The natural home of the orangutan is the leafy canopy of the Southeast Asian rainforests in Sumatra and Borneo, which are abundant with the fruit that these apes eat. They are the largest tree dwelling apes in the world. They need tress to live. Unfortunately the growth of the illegal logging and gold mining industries has destroyed the orangutan's trees and their habitat at an alarming rate.
Endangered
Orangutans have lost much of their habitat.
At most, 20,000 orangutans still exist in the wild, which is 30 to 50 percent fewer than were estimated 10 years ago and 80% less then 20 years ago. Some are predicting that unless we do something now to save these animals they will be extinct by 2020.
Once ranging throughout Southeast Asia, the species now occupies only small pockets of habitat on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Their future is tied to their habitat. They live, eat and sleep in the trees. As the trees disappear, so do the organgutans.
Orangutans are not stay-at-home animals. Every day, they travel through large areas of forest, gathering the variety of bark, insects, and different types of fruit they eat, which are spread throughout thousands of forest acres. But increasingly, the orangutan has had to compete for space with the logging industry. Timber is being harvested out of the orangutan's habitat, stripping the forests. And most recently, a series of forest fires has devastated the area, causing untold damage to the already fragile habitat.
In
addition to suffering the effects of logging, the orangutan's
habitat has fallen victim to agricultural development. In Malaysia, palm oil
plantations have taken the place of forests, and one plantation can occupy
as many as 50,000 acres. As forests are cleared for planting, orangutans'
homes shrink to small clusters of trees on which they are marooned, living
in and eating from the trees that are farmers' livelihoods.
Many orangutans are victims of the illegal pet trade, which skyrocketed in the 1980s after a 1986 television show in Taiwan featured a family with an orangutan as a pet. Demand grew quickly, and poachers descended on the rainforests to grab baby orangutans and sell them on the black market. Taiwan is still the biggest illegal importer of baby orangutans. Once these babies mature, however, they become too strong and bossy for their owners, many of whom abandon them.
High Intelligence
Whether they live in treetops or zoos, orangutans exhibit a high level of intelligence. Orangutans in the wild are capable of creating and using tools; those in captivity demonstrate their ability to think and solve problems.
WE NEED MONEY TO CONTINUE OUR WORK AND ARE MAKING THIS DESPERATE PLEA ON BEHALF OF THE ANIMALS
The types of programs that we have supported include:
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Orangutans that were previously captured are re-introduced back into their natural habitat and patiently taught to fend for themselves. This can take up to eight years!
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Work with the forest rangers to reduce the poaching.
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Reforest the orangutan's habitat which is disappearing at the rate of 5 hectares a minute!
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Develop alternative sources of income for the villagers so that they don't have to chop down the forest or kill the nearly extinct orangutans.
THESE ANIMALS NEED YOUR IMMEDIATE HELP!
DON'T LET THEM GO FOREVER!
THERE IS STILL TIME TO SAVE THEM.
Click here to donate to help save the orangutans and other animals. Get a free "Save the Animals" screensaver.
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