The Deforestation Must Stop Now!

THE DEFORESTATION MUST STOP NOW!

Article By: Melarn Murphy

The deforestation of the Indonesian palm oil plantations has gone too far. Many of the precious wildlife that make their homes in those forests are being destroyed mercilessly, all for money. When the world turns their back on the defenceless creatures that we are suppose to be protecting, what are we coming to?

6 million hectares of Indonesia are set aside for palm oil plantations. The plantations are taking over rainforests, which is the natural habitat for two species of orang-utans: the Sumatran Orang-utan, which is now critically endangered, and the Borneo Orang-utan, which is endangered. Scientists now estimate that fewer than

60 000 orang-utans are left in the wild – the UNEP predicts that orang-utans will be virtually eliminated from the wild in two decades. Of these numbers, it’s estimated that only 6600 of these are Sumatran

Orang-utan! Orang-utans make their homes in these plantations, but as more trees are getting cut down for money, the orang-utan’s numbers are dropping like flies – but no wonder why! Seeing as it’s rare for adult orang-utans, who are extremely adapted to the trees to ever touch the ground, anyone can see forest degradation, fragmentation and just outright clearing are killing these beautiful beings. It’s time for the world to open their eyes to what is happening to the amazing beings, so like ourselves, because of their selfish motives. We understand that people need money to live, yes, but at the expense of other defenceless animals lives? That is completely barbaric!

Deforestation is the primary threat to the orang-utans. But on top of this, people kill orang-utans for the illegal wildlife trade – the poachers kill the mother and then take the baby for their pet. According to WWF, there are more pet orang-utans than what is left in the wild (in Taipei, Taiwan). Not ONLY this, these absolutely amazing poachers just have to decide that they also want to kill more orang-utans for food, for the illegal so called bush meat trade. According to the Orang-utan Conservancy, this problem has become much worse because most Indonesian logging companies do not supply food for their workers. To make way for these plantations, massive areas of forest have been burned. It is thought that many of the slow moving orang-utans would have burned to death – but not only this! In some areas of Indonesia,

orang-utans are shot by farmers as they are considered to be a pest. Have people ever thought that of themselves? Look at the devastation they are causing!

People need to open their eyes to look at the amount of devastation they causing to the forgiving environment. A species of animal is going extinct everyday – do we really want the orang-utan’s to be part of this as well?