
Borneo Lost More Than 100k Orangutans from 1999 to 2015 - montrose
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/science/orangutans-endangered-species.html
======
mdb333
Its definitely sad to see in person where bordering on pristine primary
rainforest are miles of palm plantations encroaching closer every day. Of
course, don't forget all the problems caused by the farmers slash & burn
tactics too.

Need to boycott companies and products that use palm oil! Make sure you read
labels when you buy foods and choose more sustainable options.

~~~
awakeasleep
I hate to remind everyone, but Nutella is Palm Oil with cocoa and hazlenut
flavor.

Of course, Nutella works to ensure all their palm oil has some veneer of
sustainability, but the fact is the more of the planet that eats it, the more
palms need to be planted.

~~~
merreborn
For what it's worth...

> Ferrero... reached its goal of using only palm oil that has been certified
> by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil... Nutella’s palm oil comes mostly
> from Malaysia, as well as from Brazil, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea,
> according to reports.

> Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group, told Quartz in a statement
> that it opposes a boycott of products with palm oil because “a blanket
> boycott of this agricultural crop will not solve problems in its
> production.”

[https://qz.com/430450/no-you-dont-have-to-boycott-nutella-
fo...](https://qz.com/430450/no-you-dont-have-to-boycott-nutella-for-the-
environment-says-greenpeace/)

~~~
sleepyhead
Well the problem here is that the Roundtable of "Sustainable" Palm oil has HQ
in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world,
particularly so with politicians who deal with palm oil. Sarawak (Borneo) have
seen most of the huge jungle being converted to palm oil plantation because
they basically had a dictator in charge for thirty years who enriched himself
and his family from it. So this organisation would have very little
possibility to actively make improvements due to the political conditions in
Malaysia. They don't really have free and fair elections - something that
people are trying to change but have been jailed for. The main opposition
leader is for example in jail.

While it is better to buy from RSPO than non-RSPO sources it is far from
sustainable.

------
newnewpdro
It doesn't even stop there.

There are numerous reports of Orangutans being exploited as sex slaves in the
midst of this palm plantation induced destruction of their habitats.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=orangutan+prost...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=orangutan+prostitution)

It's probably insignificant, but I am now very careful when purchasing any
manufactured goods, stuff like peanut butter. If Palm oil is an ingredient,
I'm not buying it, full stop. Not sure what else an individual can do to
combat this disgusting situation.

~~~
diogenescynic
The only solutions is to somehow find jobs or alternatives that pay more than
these destructive actions. The problem is this is simply the best option they
have. We can’t save the animals without helping the humans first. Jane Goodall
basically says the same thing in her lectures now.

~~~
newnewpdro
I think it becomes a whole lot easier for the people doing this to rationalize
it when surrounded by the destruction being meted out by these huge
corporations buying the palm oil.

Like a case of broken windows [1]. One could argue if such wanton destruction
of the Orangutan habitats wasn't occurring in the first place, then there'd be
significantly less incidence of Orangutan prostitution.

The destruction is not only precipitating Orangutans destined for premature
death available to the sex traffickers, it's also setting an example of total
disregard for their lives on a massive scale. What harm is there in exploiting
them briefly for profit before they die? (Not my position, but I can easily
imagine that thought process being real for the traffickers.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

~~~
tinymollusk
Broken Windows Theory is at best, hotly contested. The wikipedia article
linked above covers the debate (which has been around since the theory was
published in 1982, without much resolution in whether the evidence supports
the theory).

~~~
newnewpdro
There are obviously limits to the strategy for effectively preventing crime.

But I feel it's also fairly obvious that there are positive effects to
demonstrating care and good hygiene in general. It promotes the same from
others. To do the contrary, demonstrating carelessness and neglect, has the
opposite effect.

<anecdata> This week I was hauling a trailer load of trash from a cabin I'm
rehabbing out to the dump. One of my distant neighbors I hadn't met yet walked
out to the street and flagged me down to introduce himself and have a chat.

In the course of the conversation, he asked where I was taking my load of
trash. I replied "to the dumpsters at the community center", an appropriate
place for disposal.

He indicated across the street to an abandoned, decrepit cabin, which is
directly across the road from his property a sprawling ~20 acre complex. What
he suggested surprised me considering the proximity to his own property. He
said "You could just throw it in there, the owner doesn't care about the
place."

I bit my tongue and continued on to the dumpster, with thoughts of broken
windows circulating my mind. </anecdata>

~~~
tinymollusk
I agree that it feels fairly obvious, but if it were such a strong impact on
crime rates, wouldn't that be obvious in the data?

------
justboxing
TL;DR: Poaching.

EDIT: It's not even that, people are just straight up killing these poor
orangutans.

> “Worryingly, however, the largest number of orangutans were lost from areas
> that remained forested during the study period. This implies a large role of
> killing.”

> In February, Indonesian police arrested two rubber plantation workers in
> Borneo, accusing them of shooting an orangutan multiple times, decapitating
> it and then throwing its body into a river. The men claimed they were acting
> in self-defense, according to local media reports.

> So, in addition to protection of forests, we need to focus on addressing the
> underlying causes of orangutan killing. The latter requires public awareness
> and education, more effective law enforcement, and also more studies as to
> why people kill orangutans in the first place,” he said.

Source: OP

~~~
JustAnotherPat
It's comfortable to blame poaching because it makes westerners feel less
complicit.

But that's not at all what the article states:

>“The decline in population density was most severe in areas that were
deforested or transformed for industrial agriculture, as orangutans struggle
to live outside forest areas,” said a lead researcher for the study, Maria
Voigt of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

~~~
justboxing
You conveniently cherry picked 1 quote that talks about deforestation. See 3
other quotes that blames even the mostly densely forested areas are seeing
large numbers of orangutans being killed, almost all attributed to humans.

~~~
namelost
It's not quite so straightforward, the deforestation enables humans to access
more of the island than they otherwise would be able to.

~~~
wahern
I was reading a great, longform article recently about deforestation in
Brazil.[1] The article explained how logging is really what opens the forest
up to invaders. Even when loggers selectively take a small number of trees in
an attempt to keep the ecosystem intact, the logging roads they create reach
_deep_ into the jungle. These roads substantially accelerate exploitation of
the jungle, including clear-cutting for farming.

This isn't obvious from satellite imagery where it would appear that the
jungle is intact, but if there's a logging road nearby then you can be sure
poachers, miners, and others are running around underneath the canopy.

[1] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/amazon-
rainforest...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/amazon-rainforest-
deforestation-crisis/article37722932/?click=sf_globe)

------
TaylorAlexander
When people say life has generally gotten better in the last several decades,
this is the kind of thing I think of. Gotten better for who? Not the
Orangutans.

~~~
mc32
In that vein, it's definitely gotten harder for pathogens.

When people talk about life getting better they generally mean human welfare,
not wildlife welfare. Never the less, without progress in science and
industry, I'm sure wildlife would be even worse off. Imagine if most people
still burnt non petroleum resources for cooking and heating....

Trivia: Orang orang = people, orang utan = forest people.

~~~
goatlover
There probably wouldn't be 7.4 billion people either. People burnt non
petroleum resources in that part of the world for a very long time.

~~~
mc32
I'll give you that but I think it likely without advances, we'd've exhausted
forests with 3bill subsistence level humans.

~~~
pishpash
Subsistence level humans don't get to 3 billion. They'll get periodically
wiped out by idiosyncratic events.

~~~
mc32
Depends what you mean by subsistence. I meant like the farming we had in
America in the 1900s, or Rural Mexico, rural Kenya in the 70s, Russia 1920s.
You can sustain a lot of people --but it requires clearcutting, and burning.
Lots of inefficiency and waste.

------
dodyg
Indonesia had a revolution in 1998. We got a democracy as a result but also
decentralization of governance. In the first and half decade of
decentralization the level of corruptions simply spike (from already a high
level). You see the aggressive expansion of land grabbing for palm oil.

The only way to resolve this issue is to push for better governance in
Indonesia.

------
fludlight
Full text of the study cited:

[http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/pdf/S0960-9822(18)30086-...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/pdf/S0960-9822\(18\)30086-1.pdf)

------
oldcynic
That's OK so long as we can plant more palm oil. </s>

I really wonder at what point we decide we've destroyed enough of the natural
world. It looks like we're not going to stop at all. Which is rather
depressing.

~~~
slededit
Since about 2003 or so world forest cover has been growing - not decreasing.
So the answer is we've already decided.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/glo...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/globe-
debate/we-are-making-the-globe-greener/article26147272/)

~~~
oldcynic
We're still losing vast amounts of ancient tropical rainforest whilst we've
started to increase temperate and mostly boreal forest (coniferous).

It's not a fair trade and of no help to the species under threat.

------
indescions_2018
Represents an urgent call to action for citizen scientists everywhere.
Cataloguing of biodiversity is now possible on an historic scale.

Contribution of citizen science towards international biodiversity monitoring

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716303639?via%3Dihub)

The documentary footage from the original National Geographic Bornean
Orangutan expedition in the early 1970s really tells the tale. Remarkable how
"unstressed" they seem in their ancient lush jungle habitat. Both mothers and
babies playfully cavorting with Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas!

Search for the Great Apes: Part 1 -- Orangutans

[https://archive.org/details/searchforthegreatapespart1orangu...](https://archive.org/details/searchforthegreatapespart1orangutans)

------
Mizza
Future generations will see this as genocide.

~~~
totalZero
I've never been fond of this line of argument, because (A) the concurring
opinion of a future person is not a definitive source of authority, and (B)
there is no way to verify or falsify such a prediction about opinions in the
future.

Not saying I disagree with the overall point, and I personally would not feel
comfortable murdering a fellow primate. Just saying I see this "future
generations..." line of persuasive reasoning often and it usually jostles me
in an unwelcome way.

------
evincarofautumn
I recently learned that this is yet another reason to avoid banning kratom in
the US. It’s an understory crop—growers work within the existing jungle
ecosystem, because clear-cutting is not just unnecessary but
counterproductive. The US consumes a large fraction (~25%) of the world’s
kratom, and there’s almost no local cultivation. So if we were to outlaw it,
not only would we lose what I believe is a key lifeline in combating the
opioid crisis, but also many growers in Southeast Asia would be forced to
switch to plantation crops such as oil palm and rubber. These result in
deforestation, loss of habitat for orangutans, tigers, and other species,
increased risk of fire, and worsening human rights conditions.

------
fellellor
>In February, Indonesian police arrested two rubber plantation workers in
Borneo, accusing them of shooting an orangutan multiple times, decapitating it
and then throwing its body into a river.

This is just fucked up. Human cruelty knows no bounds.

Disturbed individuals who eventually become serial killers, start by torturing
animals before graduating to humans.

Maybe the near human appearance and mannerisms of these apes, make them an
attractive target for such individuals.

------
dodyg
I come from North Kalimantan. Palm Oil plantation is very productive. Every
single part of the fruit can be used. Nothing is thrown away.

We just need to manage the expansion of the plantation properly. It's getting
better now under the Jokowi administration but we shall see if he gets elected
the second time.

------
kaybe
[https://lebenswald.org/](https://lebenswald.org/)

If you are looking to do something, here is a charity that takes care of
orphan apes, buys land for the species to live on and lobbies for their
protection.

------
mirimir
That amounts to ~50% of the ~2000 population :(

------
kristofferR
I hope they find them

------
arthurcolle
that's a whole lot of orangutans

~~~
pboutros
not sure why you're being downvoted. I agree, that is a LOT of orangutans. Too
many, IMO. (disclaimer: am not an expert)

~~~
IntronExon
I don’t know for sure, but while the sentiment is something we probably all
agree with, the comment itself seems insubstantial and obvious in a way thst
isn’t compatible with HN guidelines.

------
fg8qfg8fg8
Does anyone have recommendations for charities that protect Orangutans ?

------
pishpash
Humans are too dumb to save themselves. I welcome robots to enforce a hard
resource limit within which free enterprise can do its work. Just one
overarching resource limit that still leaves a buffer for the rest of the
world. And robots can shoot to kill and engage in warfare to enforce that
limit.

~~~
IntronExon
You understand human fallibility and limitations, but somehow trust us to
create perfect and impartial robots?

------
mesozoic
Where did you last see the Orangutans? Have you tried looking in the couch
cushions?

Sorry

