Palm oil puts squeeze on Asia's endangered orangutan - Reuters

Source: Reuters

Palm oil puts squeeze on Asia's endangered orangutan
Mon May 28, 2007 9:25AM EDT

By Gillian Murdoch

PALANGKARAYA, Central Kalimantan (Reuters) - Bound hand and foot,
disheveled orangutans caught raiding Borneo's oil palm crops silently
await their fate as a small crowd of plantation workers gather to watch.

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Branded pests for venturing out from their diminishing forest habitats
into plantations where they eat young palm shoots, orangutans could be
extinct in the wild in ten years time, the United Nations said in March.

Fighting against this grim prediction is the Nyaru Menteng Borneo Orangutan
Survival (BOS) centre in Central Kalimantan, which rescues orangutans and
returns them to the wild at the cost of US$3,000 per ape.

"They will kill the animals if we don't go ... It's cheaper to kill the orangutan
than put up a fence or snares," said Lone Droscher-Nielsen, the Danish-born
founder of the centre.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSSP11873920070528