Orangutans are being squeezed out by oil palm plantations

Experts have been warning that unless deforestation stops in Sumatra and Borneo, orangutans who call local forests, or what’s left of them, home could go extinct in a decade.

“If the current destruction of the rainforest continues, then I have absolutely no hope that any orangutans will remain in the wild,” stressed Alan Knight, chief executive of the conservationist group International Animal Rescue. “I would probably say 10 years if we cannot stop the destruction. I think the Sumatran [orangutan] will go before then if they don’t sort out the situation they are in.”

That’s no mere alarmism. The World Wide Fund for Nature’s Malaysian chapter (WWF-Malaysia) now reports in a paper that wild populations of critically endangered orangutans in patches of forest located in landscapes remade by oil palm estates in the Malaysian state of Sabah have plummeted by up to 30% in just 15 years, based on an aerial survey of orangutan nests.

Although orangutan populations in the interiors of remaining forests have remained stable, they have been declining to varying degrees in patches of forest interspersed by oil palm plantations, which are a primary source of revenue for Malaysia.

An estimated 650 orangutans perished in protected areas of Sabah’s eastern lowlands between 2002 and 2017, albeit populations of orangutans in Sabah still remain relatively robust at around 11,000 animals, thanks to tireless conservation efforts. Yet further deforestation could cause the numbers of these remaining primates, as well as other species, to drop even more, WWF warns.

Over the past several decades, vast swathes of forest have been felled by loggers and oil palm cultivators on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where orangutans live. The result has been massive declines in wild populations of orangutans, as well as other endemic species.

A century ago as many as 230,000 orangutans lived in the forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Today Bornean orangutans number around 100,000, while Sumatran orangutans have been reduced to about 7,500 critically endangered specimens, according to WWF.

Forests in the Malaysian state of Sabah are among these fascinating primates’ last wild refuges. “While the orangutan population has stabilized in large forest areas, their numbers declined in forest patches within oil palm landscapes of the eastern lowlands of Sabah,” WWF says.

“The monoculture nature of oil palm plantations means that they tend not to support species that are dependent on forest environment like the orangutan.”