“When the Trees are Gone” by Marius

When the Trees Are Gone 6-16
“A National Geographic special hosted by Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas, a famous Canadian orangutan specialist, underscored the terrible fact that if much more of native Indonesian forests are cut down [hence, the stumps in the image], then there will no place left for the orangutans to live. Galdikas is one of the very few biologists who extensively study these intelligent and often solitary apes, and has run a rehabilitation center to care for and then release young orangutans orphaned by poachers and hunters.
She says that extinction is a very real possibility, especially if the practice of converting forests into commercial tree farms is not stopped. She made a powerful plea to all of us as consumers that the palm oil sold on the international market was a driving force for the destruction of the last native forests that serve as the only habitat for the few remaining orangutans in the world.
 
The orangutan means old man of the forest in Malay and one cannot survive without the other. I never want to accept that it’s too late to make changes. That kind of thinking is lay and self-indulgent. We owe it to ourselves and to future generation to be more than that. What is worthwhile is worth fighting for.” -Marius