Orangutans: VIPs of Asia’s rainforests

There’s nothing wrong with palm oil. Lots of everyday products, from snacks to soaps, use it. The problem is how it’s grown. As consumers in the UK we can all help by demanding that the palm oil used in our local supermarkets only comes from Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified sources.

Hunting remains a major threat to orangutans. Most of the animals are killed by local hunters for non-conflict reasons: for their meat, or the pet trade. Young orangutans (up to the age of seven) are popular targets for the illegal pet trade. Hunters usually kill the mother when stealing her infant. Though it’s against the law, the regulations aren’t always enforced strongly enough.

Orangutan breeding and survival is greatly dependant on availability of their main food source, fruit. Currently many rainforest flowers and fruits are at risk because of the increased rainfall, which interferes with the reproduction of the plants and decreases fruit production.

In the early 1970s more than three-quarters of Borneo was forested. Within four decades, over half those forests had been cut down by commercial loggers (often illegally) or cleared for agriculture, mining, roads or other developments. Today, illegal logging inside protected areas and unsustainable logging in concessions where orangutans live remain a major threat to their survival. Less than a third of orangutans are currently living within protected forests in Borneo and their remaining habitat is severely fragmented splitting large populations into smaller, isolated sub-populations - increasing the risk of these sub-populations disappearing.