GIBBONS AND ORANG UTANS

August 10, 2005

SCIENCE & NATURE

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Rich pose threat for apes

The Times

August 09, 2005

JAKARTA: Their jungle home is shrinking alarmingly, threatening extinction in

the wild within a decade. There is, however, one place where the orang-utans of

Indonesia are booming: the homes of the super-rich.

A vogue for keeping the animals in private zoos has created a market for

poachers who capture hundreds in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra for sale

in backstreet bazaars.

Buying and selling orang-utans as pets is illegal but the law is rarely enforced

and few who are caught with the animals are fined, let alone jailed for five

years as the law allows.

The WWF conservation group found hundreds of orang-utans and gibbons for sale in

bird and animal markets, known as pasar burung, in 22 Indonesian cities, and

estimated that as many as 1000 orang-utans are poached in the wild annually for

sale. Also taken are endangered monkeys such as kloss and Bornean white-bearded

gibbons.

In Sumatra and Borneo, there are 30,000 to 40,000 orang-utans left, suffering

severe pressure from illegal loggers who are destroying their habitat at a

terrifying rate and hunters who sell their dried meat to Chinese markets as an

aphrodisiac.

With the jungles of Borneo disappearing four times as fast as forests in the

Amazon, some conservationists fear that the apes could soon disappear with

Asia's last great rainforest.

In the homes of the elite in the capital, Jakarta, however, there are believed

to be more and more orang-utans, whose Malay name means Old Man of the Forest.

Uyung Chairul, who campaigns to save the animals, said their price had

quadrupled in the past three years to $1600. The highest prices paid are for

orphaned infants.

Mr Chairul said: " The sort of people who keep these animals are those who like

to show off their wealth, and that they are above the law. Keeping an illegal

animal on display is one way to do that. An orang-utan in a garden cage is an

appealing status symbol. "

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