Orangutans

I am an Orangutan and my habitat is in Sumatra

and Borneo.

DistributionOrangutan

Orangutan Habitat

Orangutans may lose nearly all their tropical forest habitat within 15

years, unless urgent action is taken now, to end

rampant illegal logging.

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Where has my rainforest gone?

DeforestationIn 2006, Indonesia had the world's

highest deforestation rate. Preliminary figures indicate that the

nation may have lost more than 30,000 square kilometres of forest -- one of the largest areas of forest loss

on record.

Greenhouse gas emissions released from burning and

forest conversion have made Indonesia the third

largest contributor to global warming.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Kalimantan on the island of

Borneo is 400,000 hectares and the largest protected expanse of coastal

tropical heath and peat swamp forest in southeast Asia.

It's also one of the biggest remaining habitats for the critically endangered

orangutan.

Tanjung PuttingNational Park

Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, trouncing its nearest

competitor, the humble banana?

Oil palm is replacing tropical rainforests.

Palm oil tree

Over the past five years, logging of rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra has accelerated for

timber harvesting and oil palm plantations used for producing

palm oil, an increasingly important source of biofuel.

Western consumers are directly fuelling the destruction of

orangutan habitat and sensitive ecosystems as oil-palm plantations

now cover millions of hectares across

Malaysia and Indonesia.

Palm oil

The UN report, titled "The last stand of the orangutan:

State of emergency", estimates that more than 73

percent of all logging in Indonesia is illegal and that illicit

logging is now taking place, in 37 of the country's 41 national

parks.

The End