GRASP – Great Apes Survival Partnership – is a UN program backed by more than 100 countries, NGOs, research institutes, UN agencies and private companies as they struggle to save the species of great apes still exist in the wild on the Planet.

In addition to the Mountain and Cross river gorillas, bonobos and orangutans living on the Island of Borneo, in particular, are about to disappear in the coming decades.

Habitat destruction, with tropical forests being knocked down to open the field for growing palm oil trees, is rapidly reducing the area of these primates on this Island.

Orangutans are solitary creatures that reproduce slowly and need trees, which are their real home.

In this over-50-page report from GRASP, published days ago during one of its regional meetings in Asia, highlights that 75% of Borneo’s tropical forests will no longer exist by 2030 and 55,000 orangutans that still exist in the wild can disappear before the end of the century. Download the document here.

The report makes a number of urgent recommendations to be implemented to prevent this announced tragedy from becoming reality.

The rhythm of the destruction of tropical forests to convert the land into arable, especially for the exploitation of palm oil, used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, destroyed 56% of Borneo’s forests for a period of 16 years, from 1985 to 2001. If this continues, long before these predictions are fulfilled, the disappearance of our fellow primates is a sad reality.

The governments of Southeast Asia, responsible for the permission for this destruction to materialize, should be condemned by the world community and sanctioned, if they do not take the urgent action, as the greatest destroyers of our planet.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International