Sumatran Orangutan

by Tom Blodgett Jr

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Dimensions

20.000 x 14.000 inches

Title

Sumatran Orangutan

Artist

Tom Blodgett Jr

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

Orangutans use specially prepared sticks to pry termites, ants, and other insects from colonies high up in trees. They also learn quite quickly. After watching local humans spear fishing, a male orangutan was observed using a pole to acquire fish from a net.

This red-haired humanoid being is in fact a Sumatran Orangutan. She resides in Sumatra, and island in western Indonesia, on the other side of the world. She has seen over 70% of its original forests lost in Indonesia. Twenty-five million hectares of her previous range was devastated for the profit of palm oil, which ends up in certain types of cooking oil, shampoo, lipstick, chocolate, toothpaste, granola bars, biofuels and cleaning detergents. Everything from soaps to beauty products to burgers use this oil, particularly those that are mass produced. Poisonous pesticides are used extensively, and they too end up in these products. Some of the palm-oil land previously harvested has been abandoned. And so it is that 92% of orangutans have been lost from a century ago and only 7,000 Sumatran Orangutans are left in the wild. Meanwhile the human population, at its current pace, will reach 9 billion by 2050. Furthermore, all of the developing nations have aspirations (naturally) to consume the way westerners do.

The profits of palm oil go to a relatively small number of people who can afford the capital necessary. It is estimated that 60 to 90 million people depend on these forests for their livelihoods, but are then evicted. Those that work for these larger corporations endure pesticides which damage their skin. But of course, it�s more complicated than this when people come to depend on the work, even if the benefits are meager.

Recently, the work of environmental groups has succeeded in the forging of an agreement between Gold Agri-Resources, the second-largest palm oil company in the world, and the government of Indonesia. Essentially it's an agreement to not develop (clear cut) forests of high conservation value, but allows the company to still exploit other areas of forest, and land that is judged to be of lower conservation value.

Uploaded

April 22nd, 2011

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