Fires pushing orangutans closer to extinction

Fires raging in an Indonesian swamp forest may have killed a third of the rare Sumatran orangutans living there and all of them may be lost this year, conservationists have warned.

The Tripa swamp forest in Aceh province is home to the world’s densest population of critically endangered Sumatran orangutans. About 200 still live there – down from 3,000 in 1990 – out of a world population estimated at 6,600, the conservationists said.

Images from December show only 30,311 acres of Tripa’s original 148,260 acres of forest remains, said Graham Usher of the Foundation of a Sustainable Ecosystem.

He said the rest has been broken up and degraded as palm oil firms drain the swamp, adding that 92 fire hotspots were recorded between 19 and 25 March in plantations in the area.

“If there is a prolonged drought and the fire continues … then orangutans, tigers and sun bears within it will disappear will be exterminated before the end of 2012,” he said yesterday. Environmental groups, including Greenpeace, have formed the Coalition to Save Tripa to raise awareness of the issue.

Ian Singleton, conservation director of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, said: “It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears.”