Red Alert

I remember some ten years ago when I attended a camp at Matang Wildlife Centre, an instructor told us his real life experience.

A European friend of him visited Sarawak and was furious after a few days stay. This is what he told him, "I expected to see Hornbills flying around but so far I've seen none. How can this place be called 'The Land of The Hornbills' if I can see no hornbill?"

It's ashame.

I had never seen a Hornbill flying myself until I went to Pangkor Island. Pangkor is a fishing island off the coast of Perak, not Sawarak.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for 2007 was released last week.

I read about this from BBC News

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Gorillas, orangutans, and corals are among the plants and animals which are sliding closer to extinction.

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The Sumatran orangutan was already Critically Endangered before this assessment, with numbers having fallen by 80% in the last 75 years.

But IUCN has identified new threats to the 7,300 individuals that remain. Forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, and habitat is being split up by the building of new roads.

In Borneo, home to the second orangutan species, palm oil plantations have expanded 10-fold in a decade, and now take up 27,000 sq km of the island. Illegal logging reduces habitat still further, while another threat comes from hunting for food and the illegal international pet trade.

So fragmented have some parts of the Bornean forest become that some isolated orangutan populations now number less than 50 individuals, which IUCN notes are "apparently not viable in the long term".

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Orang Utan, like the Hornbills, is one of the icons of Borneo. For those who've grown up in Borneo, this human like animal is one of the things that's close to our heart. Er...at least this is what I think. It's sad to know that Orang Utan is one of the top on the Red List again. WWF-UK even predicted it to be extincted in 20 years time. If it's to become truth and i am fortunate enough to live longer, When I am still alive, Orang Utan might be gone forever.

I am not a environmentalist nor do my voices significant. I just hope that more people can do little more something so our future generations will still get to enjoy what we are having now...

when the buying stops, the killing can too

*Hm.... hippo is on the Red List too. I sure hope the hippo in Animal Farm can set itself free into the wild and reproduce.