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In the Malay language orang-utan means "person of the forest". Along with the gorilla and chimpanzee, it is often described as "man's closest relative". However, the solitary life of the largest tree-living mammal has not saved it from destruction by humans. This great ape is in grave danger.
The orang-utan knows how to put on a show when necessary and defends its territory with dramatic displays, loudly announcing its presence with a booming voice that can be heard several kilometers away. Young orang-utans travel on the mother's back or belly for over two years. The animal lives mostly on fruit, young leaves, bark, small vertebrates, bird eggs and insects. Daytime is spent looking for food and every night the animal builds a new nest about 12 to 18 meters above the ground. Their life expectancy in the wild is approximately 35 years. Orang-utans are long-haired and shaggy, except for the face which is hairless, and their colour varies from bright orange in young animals to dark reddish-brown in adults. The Sumatran subspecies is paler in colour than the one found on the island of Borneo. Orang-utans have long arms (with a spread of up to 2.25 meters) and long narrow hands, and both their hands and feet have opposable thumbs. Orang-utans may be up to 1.5 meters tall, and males may weigh as much as 144 kilos, while females may weigh up to 65 kilos. Orang-utans live in the tropical montane forests, lowland dipterocarp forests, tropical peat swamp forests, and tropical health forests of Borneo and northern Sumatra (see map). The highest densities of orang-utans are found in swamp forest habitats. An estimated 9,000 orang-utans survive in northern Sumatra, mainly around one national park, while some 10,000 to 15,000 orang-utans remain on the island of Borneo, in eight major isolated areas. Despite laws in Indonesia and Malaysia to protect the Orang-utan, it is facing extinction because its habitats are being destroyed by agriculture and logging. Forests around protected areas are also increasingly degraded and the orang-utan is being forced into areas too small to support viable populations. Poachers also hunt the infants, for the live-animal trade with the mother usually killed to at her young. About 80 percent of the orang-utan's habitat has been deforested in the past 20 years. Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society predict that the world's largest natural orang-utan population will be extinct in a decade unless poaching and habitat destruction can be stopped. With losses running at a thousand a year, numbers have plummeted from 12,000 in 1993 to just 6,000 today. An international campaign to save the great apes - the gorilla, orang-utans and chimpanzees - may be the last chance to stop their extinction. The Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) is joint effort of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and a coalition of more than 40 conservation groups in the Ape Alliance. According to UNEP's Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, it's "one minute to midnight for the Great Apes". Some experts estimate that in as little as 5 to 10 years, they will be extinct across most of their range. As part of the global effort to protect the planet's biodiversity, UNEP administers one of the world's largest conservation agreements-the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES. Adopted in 1973, it became international law two years later. More than 150 governments have ratified the treaty, which offers varying protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants, depending on their condition in the wild and the effect that international trade may have on them. CITES bans international commercial trade in species threatened with extinction, such as cheetahs, tigers, the great apes, many tortoises and birds of prey. It also protects other species, which are not threatened, but may be at serious risk unless international trade is strictly regulated.
LEARN MORE how the UN works with its partners around the world to save endangered species. Go to the links at the side of the page. Photo credit: UN |
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