Orangutans
The most endangered of the great apes is the orangutan.
Andy Antilla of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa explains their situation this way. Imagine a big football stadium like the Rose Bowl in California. If you took all the orangutans in the wild and put them in the stadium it wouldn’t even be half full. Orangutans are sometimes hunted and sometimes solds as pets but the biggest threat is habitat destruction. Orangutan males live on their own and the females take care of the children. They need large areas to wander and forage. One of the reasons that the orangutans are not doing so well is that babies stay with the Mothers up to 10 years so that they do not have babies often. Also, if a Mother is killed the child often cannot survive. Ironically, orangutan habitat is partly being destroyed because of people who care about the environment and the planet. Because they want to help the environment by using palm oil, which is a cleaner fuel and healthier food, much orangutan habitat is being turned into palm oil plantations. Orangutan means “man of the forest” and Orangutans are very similar to humans.
Dr. Birute Galdikas is a great orangutan researcher and conservationist. You can read about her and about saving orangutans at
Check out the great information and photo gallery at
Dr. Robert Shumaker at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa works very closely with the orangutans Azy, Knobi, and Allie. He also is very involved in helping to save orangutans in the wild. You can read about his work and learns lots about orangutans at
http://greatapetrust.org/orangutan/meet/index.php
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