Orangutans could die out
30/09/2003 09:29  - (SA)  

Washington - Orangutans could disappear within the next 10 to 20 years if illegal logging that is destroying their habitat is not stopped, according to a report released on Monday.

Anthropologist Cheryl Knott of Harvard University said loggers have infringed on the apes' habitat in Gunung Palung National Park, on the Indonesian island of Borneo. Some 2 500 orangutans - about 10% of the world's remaining wild population of the apes - live in the park.

"At the current rate of habitat destruction, orangutans could be extinct in the wild in 10 to 20 years. We must stop this trend - the alternative is unthinkable," Knott, who has studied the park's apes, wrote in the October issue of National Geographic.

Orangutans, close kin to humans, live only on Borneo and the nearby island of Sumatra. By some estimates, more than 80% of their original habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia has been destroyed, and deforestation has escalated with political and economic turmoil.

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