Orangutan, The Endangered Innocent

I don’t know why I never really write about orangutan though anytime I see them on TV or visit them in the zoo, I just want to hug them because they are too cute to be true (in fact they are really true and they are cute, especially the babies). Recently, every time I see them on TV, the news I hear about is only about their extinction issues, how the government seems to neglect them, local people do not care of their lives and how the fighters like organizations which struggle to protect them are in difficulties of getting financial support. Well, I cannot say I have done much for them, I just don’t do anything sadly.

Orangutans are mammals that real habitat is in forest. They come from Indonesia (Sumatera and Kalimantan or Borneo) and Malaysia. Their appearance is very similar to human, even almost 90% of their body functions are like human, that was what many articles said about them. But, based on my own experience, as long as I have seen them, they have more fur in amounts and it grows much longer too. Orangutans also have very long hands that even if they are standing, their hands will still reach the ground. They eat fruit, although they also eat bark, leaves even insects! Yes, they are omnivore but they aren’t eat human anyway or any other big animals. Indeed, they are the one that become the prey of predators like hogs, tigers, crocodiles and black eagles (well, their predators are everywhere). Talking about predators, actually the now predators who really threat them are HUMANS! Yes, it’s us! US! US!

After all that animal predators that come from land, river even sky, the real dangerous predators are humans. Based on data from the researchers and scientists, the existence of orangutans have been decreasing since the late 90’s until now, and the amount is shocked me, it’s from 200.000 species in 1990 to 6.500 species recently (but human growth is inevitably high (?). Their amount is mainly because of foresting, illegal trading and oil palm plantation. So what is the impact of these activities to orangutans?

Foresting is an activity which means that human cuts the trees in the forest to get the woods. While illegal trading is the trade activity between human which sells orangutan to be personal pet, cure or collection. And oil palm plantation is a massive planting activity by large company to produce oil palms for industrial needs, it really fragments the move and space of orangutans because the plantation project changes the tropical forest to be big oil palm garden.

http://tcktcktck.org/

Well, how it affects the orangutans greatly? This explanation is only a brief description, but I hope it will give a little enlightenment about how important is the existence of orangutan in our lives, literally us the human beings who live in the place where high buildings and vehicles are everywhere to be seen. Orangutans are traveler animals, while they eat the fruits, they are hanging from one tree branches to another branches. This habit makes orangutans naturally help the forest reproduce new trees in many different places because orangutans are great travelers that can travel so far (about many kilometers from where they start). Can you get that now? That the little cute orangutans help the earth to breathe by their natural habits, they help to make the earth stay green and cool among the pollution that has been spreading and made the earth hotter.

And finally what is the relation of the illegal trading and oil palm plantation to the existence of orangutans? They actually are the direct killers of orangutans. Humans are stealing orangutans from the forest to keep them as a pet, it happens especially to the infant orangutans, which to steal them, humans have to kill the mother. So, knowing the amount of infant orangutans kept as pet means knowing the amount of adult orangutans killed. The other goals also happens in illegal trading, orangutans are killed to be the cure of human sicknesses. Yes, there are some people (these some means more than some) who believe that orangutans are one of natural drug for the illness. Not only for cure but they also kill orangutans to get the profit from selling their skulls.

In oil palm plantation, orangutans are considered as disturbing animals, because they lost their forest, they seek for foods in the oil palm garden and eat the oil palm. This means a loss for the industry because they have less industrial product resources. Thus, the fast solution is to catch the orangutans dead or alive to keep the oil palms safe.

Although the species have decreased a lot, but there have been also many organizations even individuals who are really care to orangutans although they actually also need many financial support. They preserve and take care of rest of them like a child. For the infant orangutans, they are also trained to be able living in the secondary forest after some years of caring by the humans in the organization which goals are to preserve and maintain the existence of orangutan.

ORANGUTAN WANTS TO SAY HELLO TO YOU

P.S:
Have a further reading to orangutan center here (this is only one of many organizations)
And also to this site tck contest