Credit: iStockphoto
Cinta, a baby orangutan found lost and alone in a vast Borneo palm oil plantation, now clings to a tree at a sanctuary for the great apes, staring intently at dozens of tourists.
She is one of the casualties of the boom in palm oil - used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine - which has seen swathes of jungle felled in Borneo, an island split between Malaysia and Indonesia.
There are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80% of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia's Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak. A 2007 assessment by the United Nations Environment Program warned that the charismatic red-haired apes will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current deforestation trends continue.
Stung by criticism of its environmental record, Malaysian palm oil industry officials pledged at a conference earlier this month to fund the establishment of wildlife corridors that experts say could help save the species.
"The major issue we face with orangutans today is what we called the fragmented population," said Marc Ancrenaz from the environmental group Hutan. "True enough there are 11,000 orangutans in (Sabah) but they are split up in many small populations, and many of these populations are not connected any more," he told the conference near Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.
An aerial survey carried out by Hutan and wildlife authorities in eastern Sabah last year revealed some 1,000 orangutan treetop "nests" located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.
Isolated from each other, the tiny communities are at risk of inbreeding and also of simply becoming lost in the vastness of the plantations - just like three-year-old Cinta and the five other young apes at the Tuaran sanctuary. After becoming separated from their mothers, they were rescued from certain death and sent to the forested reserve, situated near a string of luxury beachside resorts north of Kota Kinabalu.
As well as destroying their jungle habitat, the expansion of palm oil, which now covers nearly one fifth of Sabah alone, poses other risks to the endangered species. Orangutans that damage the palm oil fruits can be hunted down and killed, and it is quite common for young apes to be captured and kept as pets by villagers living alongside the plantations.
Save he Orangutans! Collect the Whole Set!
Here's a thought: if you want to save the orangutans -- or any endangered species, for that matter -- all you need to do is publicize that it tastes good. Think of the endangered cow, chicken, pig, sheep, catfish, alligator, goat, salmon...
What's that you say? They're not endangered? Precisely! They are not endangered because there is a market demand for them. Therefore, there are entrepeneurs who make sure that there are plenty of them to sell.
Just as the palm trees are grown for their oil, if there were a market for orangutan we would have no shortage of them. For instance, in Africa, the only countries that have more elephants than they know what to do with are those that have legal hunting of the animals. The locals get the meat and hides for their use, not to mention the tourism and safari profits. They therefore have a vested interest in keeping the elephants healthy.
Ah! The free market! It works every time!
Not the Panacea you claim
I feel it necessary to point out that the previous commentor has made a variety of false or ignorant claims. The comment ignores an obvious argument to the contrary, specifically that a great many endangered species are endangered specifically because there is a market for their products. Example cases include blue whales, the black rhinoceros, and the giant otter. Furthermore, a little research shows that the statements regarding elephants in Africa are patently false. I could find no evidence that any country has "more elephants than they know what to do with." The fact that the African elephant populations are no longer endangered can be linked directly to the fact that the hunting of them is largely illegal.
Finally, the statement regarding the "free market" is especially specious. The restriction of hunting, and subsequent recovery of the elephant population is exactly the opposite of a free market. Indeed, even the example provided by the poster (were it true) would reflect a controlled market, as the restrictions are enforced by the government, not private corporations.
Seconded.
I second that.
HUMANS are the cause of their extinction; so why further it by saying we should domesticate them and/or use them for their hides or bones??
What Profit From the Destruction of Profit?
The whole point of this discussion is to find ways to preserve species. If making a profit on said species actully contributes to its survival, what harm is there?
Profit and wealth are not bad things, People! They are what make it possible to actually care about extinctions. Were we all living in squalor, there would be no environmental movement!
Maybe Not a Panacea, But Better Than the Alternative
My suggestion as to the orangutan problem was probably more tongue-in-cheek than an actual plan. However, it does point out one simple fact: were a controlled economy an actual benefit to the environment, Communist China and the former Soviet nations wouldn't be the environmental basket cases they are today.
Consider commercial nuclear power. The only case on record where anyone was harmed by nuclear power was Chernobyl. This is a classic case of government run, top down economy having absolutely no regard for the people under their control. Indeed, there was even less regard for the people living in neighboring countries that were also adversely affected by Soviet incompetence and intransigence. In the West, we had the example of Three Mile Island, wherein everything that could go wrong actually did, but only a small amount of radioactive krypton was released, harming no one.
As for your example of "the free market" endangering blue whales, black rhinoceros, and the giant otter, I would just like to point out that they all live in regions of the world that are not moderated by a rule of law, such as exists in the US or Australia. This also goes to answer your point about regulation being "the exact opposite of a free market". Here in the US, we have an abundance of game animals, from fish to apex land predators, all of which are generally protected, not only by legislation, but also by efforts of hunters and other serious conservationists. But they are not protected by outright bans. Such draconian measures only drive the price of the banned species up and encourage locals, who would otherwise be open to the idea of conservation, to join the poachers who place no limits on their kills.
Consider the African nations that ban all hunting of elephants. They have inordinate troubles with poaching. Indeed, the local population is often driven into poaching, as the elephants often destroy their crops and they have no vested interest, no source of profit, from the animals. At the same time, they simply don't have the resources to police that same population that might turn to poaching. Those that allow hunting have greater incomes from the tourist/hunting trade with all the ancillary profits that flow from it. Furthermore, the locals get use of the meat, hides, and other parts of the elephants that are harvested. The incentive to poach suddenly becomes less attractive. Also, any inclination to wantonly destroy the elephants becomes economic insanity.
Here's another example from the US. Currently, the case can be made that there are more trees in the Continental US today than there were in 1776. This is because of several factors:
1) In 1776, all agriculture was done on the East Coast, necessitating the clear cutting of vast regions of forest. Since then, most farming was moved to the Mid West and the Southwest, two areas noted for their lack of trees. The East Coast, meanwhile, grew back its forests. One could see the truth in this by flying down the East Coast: All you see are trees.
2) In 1776, there was only one response to a forest fire: you moved away. Nowadays, we go to extraordinary lengths to put forest fires out. Sometimes, we are so successful that the trees die of old age, incapable of dropping their seeds (sequoias, for example, need fire to drop their seeds) or the older trees smother the seedlings in their shade.
3) Logging companies (those banes of the modern environmentalist) learned that trees aren't a resource. They are a crop. True, the growing season is a lot longer than it is for, say, wheat. But the principle remains the same. Just as a farmer holds back some of his grain as seed crop, logging companies plant between six and ten new trees for every one tree they harvest. This wasn't done through any sort of governmental fiat. These companies had to make sure that they had a constant crop of mature trees if they wanted to stay in business.
A free market is not anarchy. It can only exist in the context of the rule of law. Totalitarian regimes and controlled economies, however, so distort normal human interactions that anarchy soon follows.
Perhaps I painted with too broad a brush. Or perhaps I was too enthusiastic in my use of hyperbole. But my point still stands: Create a market (within the bounds of the rule of law) and entrepenuers will find a way to make sure there is plenty of it.