Orangutans are one of the most AT-RISK wildlife. Your donation today will help us give orangutans a fighting chance and a hopeful future.
Scientific name: Pongo pygmaeus (Bornean orangutan)
Status: Critically endangered
Food: Fruits, young leaves, bark and insects
Lifecycle: In the wild, orangutans can live up to 50 years
Breeding rate: Slowest reproducing species in the world, usually giving birth to just one infant every six to eight years
Importance: Gardener of the forest – helps spread the plant seeds. They eat fruit, seeds come out in their droppings and as they travel, they spread the seeds into a broader place. If the seeds fall to the fertile ground, the seeds will grow into a new tree.Â
Rapid developments and conversion of land are causing these agile tree-climbing mammals to live in degraded and isolated patches of forests where food and shelter are limited.
What is WWF-Malaysia doing to address these threats?
Here are how your donation today will be instrumental in our orangutan conservation works:-
- Forest restoration efforts – restoring the degraded land with native and fast-growing tree species.
- Building ecological corridors – ecological corridors facilitate the movement of orangutans and other species between isolated patches of forest to find food, shelter and mates. We have identified nine ecological corridors requiring connectivity, with at least four being crucial to the orangutan survival in Sabah.
- Conducting surveys – estimating orangutan population by conducting ground nest surveys and aerial nest surveys using either a fixed-wing drone or a helicopter
