In the 1986 novel Nature's End, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, Denver in the year 2020 is blanketed in smog so thick that people cannot venture out without portable oxygen supplies. Unfortunately, the future is now - in Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines and elsewhere. The World Wildlife Fund quotes the head of the forest programme at WWF International Secretariat, Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, as saying that "1997 will be remembered as the year the world caught fire." It is still burning in 1998.
The fires in Indonesia have been devastating, destroying 554,000 acres since January 1998, according to an April 16 ENN article. In early April, an Indonesian official said "the sheer number of devastating forest fires in East Kalimantan province was making it impossible to tackle the blazes," according to another report from ENN. Kalimantan is the Indonesian state on Borneo, an island shared by Indonesia and Malaysia. In mid April, Indonesia's minister of environment said that the fires were so bad there was no longer any hope of fighting them. He also said that he'd been complaining about the fires but nobody in Jakarta was listening. This is probably because of the great economic collapse the country has experienced - the rupiah has been devalued, people are out of work, food is in short supply, banks have been closed or merged, foreign investment has been halted, loan repayments to overseas investors have been suspended or defaulted, university students are demonstrating in Jakarta, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has set strict conditions for a major bail-out loan, among other things.
For the estimated 300 orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus) of East Kalimantan, the fires and economic collapse of Indonesia are a death nell. The fires are reducing even further, habitat that has decreased an estimated 80 percent in the last 50 years. Experts estimate there are only about 25,000 to 30,000 wild orang-utans altogether.
An orang-utan, called "Old Man of the Rainforest" in Borneo and Sumatra, is almost exclusively arboreal. They live in trees where they eat mostly fruit, with a few leaves, some bark, bird eggs and bugs to make things interesting. Males tend to be solitary; females and infants often form groups of up to four and sometimes one or two more.
When fires destroy their already limited habitat, orang-utans, like other species, flee the forests. Only flight isn't always an escape; it can be a death sentence. When they reach villages, some organ-utans have been beaten by villagers who believe the orangs damage crops. In some cases, mothers have been killed and their babies made captives. Other adults are captured as well and still others are killed. While the villagers wield machetes, clubs and chain saws, the orang-utans have no weapons.
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