Conservation of Orangutans: A Status Report, 1985

Abstract

The “red-haired man of the rainforest,” or orangutan, is among the most spectacular creatures on Earth, and although representing the closest among human mammal relatives in Southeast Asia, he is in grave danger of extinction. Ironically also “cultivated” man is seriously endangered, but while humans choke the world with their biomass, aggravated by disproportional exploitation and pollution, they supplant and eradicate their closest relative as they exploit and destroy his habitat so as to serve so called “development.” In this time of Western self-scorn with respect of the qualitative aspects of what is commonly understood as “development,” it may be enlightening to notice that the existence of the red- haired man of the rainforest has been endangered whenever he happened to come into contact with “cultivated” man, even long before any European set a foot in his habitat: He has been hunted to extinction in all the regions where the earliest agricultural migrants from the Asian mainland settled.