You’ll never take my home! Orangutan’s digger battle
AGAINST overwhelming odds, this orangutan strides down a felled tree to take on a digger used by loggers to destroy its forest home.
The great ape lashed out at the huge machine – but was saved from the confrontation by an animal welfare campaigner who fired a tranquilliser dart from a blowpipe to bring it to the ground.
The member of International Animal Rescue’s orangutan protection unit in Borneo captured the animal for rehabilitation before its eventual return to the wild.
The charity posted a video of the incident on its Facebook page, writing: ‘This desperate orangutan is frantically seeking refuge from the destructive power of the bulldozer; a machine that has already decimated everything else around him.’
The distressing footage emerged as environmentalists revealed the Sungai Putri forest, where it was filmed, is still being destroyed by illegal loggers.
The Indonesian government put a moratorium on exploitation of the country’s forests last year. But Greenpeace said this week that its investigations showed six illegal logging settlements were operating at Sungai Putri at night, including some in areas with orangutan nests.
‘This is a major embarrassment for the Indonesian government,’ the organisation said.
International Animal Rescue, which released the 2013 footage this week, said: ‘Since it was taken, the Bornean orangutan has been reclassified as critically endangered. The situation has gone from bad to worse to absolutely dire.
‘Without action to halt deforestation, the future of the orangutan is looking extremely bleak.’