(Photo/Courtesy of James Askew, Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme) Orangutans are also critically endangered, due to palm oil harvesting.
The trouble with palm oilįor people who live thousands of miles from ape habitat, there is a way to make a difference: buy sustainable products. “It’s like telling Americans not to eat turkeys at Thanksgiving,” Stanford said. It’s off-menu, but ask the right questions and offer cash, and it might end up on the plate.īushmeat is a tricky problem, especially in Africa, where it has a long history as a delicacy. Off-menu delicaciesĬhimp meat passes through Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport each year, ending up on the plates of restaurantgoers in Paris. “At one time a few years ago, there were more baby orangutans being kept as pets in homes in Taiwan than there likely were in the rainforests of Indonesia,” Stanford said. In some Asian countries, exotic pets are seen as a status symbol, Stanford said. “They don’t think it was taken from a mom who was shot in Africa.” “If you go to Romania or Poland, don’t think, ‘Where did this baby chimp come from?’” Stanford said. If you go to Romania or Poland, don’t think, ‘Where did this baby chimp come from?’ They don’t think it was taken from a mom who was shot in Africa. Other species like chimpanzees and gorillas are sold to buyers in the Middle East, Eastern Europe or Asia for medical research or to put in zoos, according to Stanford. To put that in context, orangutans are critically endangered with only about 115,000 left in the wild, with up to 100,000 in Borneo, 14,000 in Sumatra and roughly 800 in Tapanuli. There’s no political will or desire to enforce Indonesian law against this.”
“In total, there’s been about six prosecutions for killing or selling ever in the history of Indonesia. “That’s 1,000 incidents of poaching,” he said, noting hunting or catching apes is illegal in Indonesia. While he was in Borneo, he saw about 1,000 orangutans. The owners drop them off at quarantine or rehabilitation centers, which will attempt to release them back into the wild. The Indonesian elite scoop up the exotic pets, only to get rid of them when they grow up to be big, strong and not as cute. Much of the selling is into the pet trade. Stationed in Indonesia for three years, he was scouring Instagram one day in his hotel room and discovered tigers and gibbons for sale, just within a few minutes. “You can pick up an orangutan on Instagram for as little as $50,” said James Askew, an orangutan researcher and PhD candidate at USC Dornsife. Smartphones have also revolutionized the pet trade. Instead, Stanford said, they’re given guns to hunt for their food and in turn, they end up eating endangered gorillas and chimps. It’s not the mining itself that’s destructive, he said, but rather, the culture around it. “They mine it in rivers, kind of like the way they mined gold in California – very low tech,” said Stanford, a biologist who spent years researching alongside primatologist Jane Goodall and is the author of Planet Without Apes and most recently The New Chimpanzee. Eighty percent of the world’s supply is found in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, “the last stronghold of the eastern lowland gorilla,” Stanford said, chair of the anthropology department at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. There’s an item in your pocket that is killing gorillas: the smartphone.Ĭoltan is an ore found in all sorts of everyday items, such as phones and Playstation consoles. Here are four unlikely things that could lead to never seeing great apes again. To do that, they must understand the threats they face.
Chimpanzee vs gorilla vs orangutan image how to#
USC researchers, such as primate expert Craig Stanford, aim to understand how to better protect these animals. What’s more, apes are the only animals to share 99 percent of their DNA with humans. It’s possible that 100 years from now, species such as orangutans will be wiped off the planet entirely. All great apes are considered severely endangered.
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