The most comprehensive study of Borneo’s orangutans estimates their numbers have plummeted by more than 100,000 since 1999, as the palm oil and paper industries shrink their jungle habitat and fatal conflicts with people increase.
The finding, which is to be published in the journal Current Biology, is in line with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) 2016 designation of Borneo’s orangutans as critically endangered.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and other institutions said the original population of the gentle ginger-haired great apes is larger than previously estimated but so is the rate of decline.
Photo: AP
The most dramatic declines were found in areas where tropical forests were cut down and converted to plantations for palm oil, which is used in a vast array of consumer products, and for timber.
However, significant population declines occurred in selectively logged forests.
“In these forest areas human pressures, such as conflict killing, poaching and the collection of baby orangutans for the pet trade have probably been the major drivers of decline,” the authors of the study said.
Earlier this month, an orangutan on the Indonesian part of Borneo island died after being shot at least 130 times with an air gun, stabbed and clubbed, the second known killing of an orangutan in the Indonesian part of Borneo this year.
Erik Meijaard, a conservationist involved in the study, said current estimates of the orangutan population on Borneo range from 75,000 to 100,000.
He said the estimates vary because of uncertainty about how many animals are living in alien habitats such as plantations and burned forests.
According to the IUCN, their numbers could drop to 47,000 by 2025 from their 2016 population estimate of about 105,000.
The real decline could be worse, because the prediction is based only on habitat loss, and does not include killings.
Sumatra’s orangutan, a separate species, is even more endangered, with a population estimated at about 12,000 animals.
In a positive twist, the new study found Bornean orangutans are more resilient and adaptable than thought.
They walk on the ground more often than previously known and can feed on plants that have not been part of their natural diet.
The authors said this may allow them to survive in smaller forests and in landscapes where the forest is fragmented.
“I expected to see a fairly steep decline, but I did not anticipate it would be this large,” said Ssaid Serge Wich of Liverpool John Moores University, one of the researchers. “When we did the analyses, we ran them again and again to figure out if we had made a mistake somewhere. You think the numbers can’t be that high, but unfortunately they are.”
“The one thing they cannot cope with, however, is the high killing rates seen currently,” he said.
“Orangutans are a very slow breeding species,” he said in a statement. “If only one in 100 adult orangutans is removed from a population per year, this population has a high likeliness to go extinct.”
Additional reporting by The Guardian
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant