Dr. Galdikas Scientist, conservationist, educator: for more than three decades Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas has studied and worked...

Merchandise & Donations 1971 Poster of Dr Biruté Galdikas Your Price: $100.00

Science Corner Learn about orangutans, tropical forest conservation and the ecology of Tanjung Puting National Park, home to the largest protected population of orangutans on the planet.

In other letters I have told you that the future for Indonesia’s tropical rain forests, the principal habitat for orangutans, looks bleak. I am writing today to tell you that the future is now; our nightmares are becoming government policy and coming very close to home. Indonesia has just entered the Guinness Book of World Records as having the fastest rate of deforestation in the world.

The government of Kalimantan Tengah (Central Indonesian Borneo), the province where OFI does much of its work, has loudly proclaimed its adherence to “green principles”; simultaneously, it has proposed a Land Use Plan for the next five years that will convert four million hectares (approximately ten million acres) of prime orangutan habitat, tropical rain forest, to palm oil plantations.
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