 Busy being rehabilitated (Image: Copyright WWF-Canon/Martin Harvey) |
The endangered Orang-Utan has become one of the emblems of international conservation. But a new report warns they could become extinct within two decades.
The orange-haired apes have seen their population plunge by 90 per cent over the last century. So can anything be done to save them?
We heard from Francis Sullivan, director of conservation for the global environment charity WWF.
We also heard from Charlotte Uhlenbroek, a wildlife presenter who has been lucky enough to see the apes in their natural environment.
BBC News Online environment correspondent Alex Kirby has compiled the following report for News Online:
The orang-utan, Asia's "wild man of the forests", could disappear in just 20 years, a campaign group believes.
WWF, the global environment network, says in the last century the number of apes fell by 91% in Borneo and Sumatra.
Globally, it says, there were thought to be somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000 orang-utans as recently as 1987.
But by 2001 that number had fallen by virtually half, to an estimated 25,000- 30,000 of the animals, more than half of them living outside protected areas.
One-Minute World News 
News services
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
Click here to watch Breakfast's report on the Orang-Utan's plight. 
