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Title: Orang-utans 'may die out by 2025' Post by: Astronuc on October 10, 2004, 10:50:14 AM This is rather disturbing >:( and depressing! :(
The orang-utan, Asia's "wild man of the forests", could disappear in just 20 years, a campaign group believes. WWF, the global environment network, says in the last century the number of apes fell by 91% in Borneo and Sumatra. Globally, it says, there were thought to be somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000 orang-utans as recently as 1987. But by 2001 that number had fallen by virtually half, to an estimated 25,000- 30,000 of the animals, more than half of them living outside protected areas. The apes, restricted to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, are regarded as two species, the Bornean (Pongo pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orang-utan (Pongo abelii). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3383425.stm |