As we navigate this troubled world, it seems that we’re facing more environmental issues than we can even keep track of. Glaciers are getting smaller all the time, plastic straws are harming turtles, and even sand is becoming surprisingly scarce.
Unfortunately, a lot of the human impact on the world manifests in places we don’t normally see. And when the problems are hidden, it obviously makes it more difficult to come up with a solution.
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With that in mind, scenes that shed light on these issues can be heartbreaking to watch, but that only demonstrates how important it is to see them.
A nonprofit called the International Animal Rescue posted a short clip of an orangutan on Facebook.
Sadly, this one showed the animal in a desperate situation. It was clearly frightened and unable to find refuge as this excavator ripped up its forest habitat, so it lashed out at the machine.
However, its attack ends quickly as a dart launched by the man standing under it starts to take effect.
It sits for a moment in front of the business end of the excavator before slipping off this log and tumbling to the ground.
However, the person who tranquilized the orangutan only did it out of concern for its safety.
He’s actually a member of International Animal Rescue and the organization stated that shortly after this dramatic scene, his team was able to rescue the ape and bring it to safety.
However, there are many more orangutans that suffered even worse fates.
Over the past 16 years, about 100,000 orangutans have been killed in Borneo, Indonesia.
According to the BBC , the animal is classified as critically endangered, but that hasn’t stopped people in the region from hunting them as a response to orangutan raids on farmers’ fruits.
However, even if all of the hunting stopped tomorrow, the orangutans would still be in serious danger.
The excavator we saw earlier is only a small part of massive operations to clear forests in the region. And the BBC reported that this deforestation could kill another 45,000 orangutans over the next 35 years.
So why is this happening? Well, the trees are cleared in order to extract palm oil, which Chris Packham from The Guardian said can be found in about half of all food and personal care products in supermarkets.
According to Greenpeace , the global demand for palm oil is high enough to destroy the amount of forest needed to fill a football field every 25 seconds.
As a result, all three species of orangutan in the area remain critically endangered.
This includes the Tapanuli orangutan, which was only discovered last year. According to The Guardian , fewer than 800 of them even existed at the time.
So as the threat of deforestation mounts, the future of this newly discovered species looks grim and uncertain.
However, that’s not to say that nothing is being done about this.
The BBC reported that conservationists have made climbable bridges so the orangutans can more easily reach what habitats still exist for them.
However, this can only serve as a short-term solution. For any serious change to occur, an effort to replant those destroyed forests needs to happen.
