Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
The lowland forest habitats of this red "man of the forest" are fast disappearing under the chainsaw, or being burned deliberately to make way for agriculture and oil palm plantations. Unless these unique great apes are conserved in well-managed, secure protected areas, and in wider forest landscapes connected by corridors, they may well be facing extinction in the wild.
With its vast natural resources, it is no surprise that many of Borneo's forests and species are severely threatened.
Like many tropical areas around the world, the natural forests of Kalimantan, Sarawak and Sabah are being cleared for commercial uses, including rubber, palm oil and pulp production. The increase in these activities is being matched by a growth in illegal wildlife trade, as logging trails and cleared forest mean easy access to more remote areas. Logging, land-clearing and conversion activities are considered to be the greatest threats to the Heart of Borneo. Today the conversion to oil palm plantations can be considered one of the biggest threats for the remaining rainforests in Borneo and the species that inhabit them.
The tiger, Asian rhinoceros, elephant and orang utan are included in the top 10 list released by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International, together with a red and pink jewel-like coral species, Corallium borneense. All are found in Malaysia.
