Visit Malaysia: The Orang Utan

Assalammualaikum!

Baru-baru ni aku ada terbaca hasil penulisan seorang saintis mengenai kehidupan Orang Utan. Rasanya artikel yang ditulis oleh beliaun sangat bagus untuk dikongsikan bersama. Cubalah baca dan hayati maksudnya.

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The islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Java, together with the Malay Peninsula stand on a shallow submarine continental extension called 'The Sunda Shelf'. These islands are inhabited by faunas which have much in common, but that of Borneo is distinctive, with about 40 mammals that are endemic; i.e. they exist nowhere else in the world. The island of Borneo is in the Malay Archipelago, southeast of the Malay Peninsula and southwest of the Philippine Islands. The population is 10,184,443 (1984 est.).It is divided into four political regions: Kalimantan, the largest, is Indonesian; SABAH (North Borneo) and SARAWAK are part of Malaysia; and tiny BRUNEI, formerly a British protectorate, gained independence in 1984.Borneo, with a length of 1,336 km (830 mi) and a maximum width of about 965 km (600 mi), is the third largest island in the world and lies across the equator in Southeast Asia. Its area is more than 743,107sq km (286,914 sq mi).

Borneo is mountainous and thick with rain forest. In the northeast, the mountains reach their greatest height; among these, Mount Kinabalu rises 4,101 m (13,455 ft). A long ridge of mountains also covers the central part of Borneo. The natural habitats of almost all the wild land mammals are found here. It is a shame to see most of these forests disappear to give way to man-made concrete jungles and plantations.

A poem I wrote in 1978 :-

A modern world of urbanizationcreated jungles of concrete contortion.
Impersonal people infest these places,a sea of nothing but indifferent faces.
People never have time to say,"Hello, good morning, how are you today?"
Factories, mills, industrializationcreated skylines of smoke pollution.
Cancerous air that seem no harmslowly killing mother nature's charm.
Vanishing species that cry out in sorrow"Save us for children of tomorrow."
Automobiles and transportationcreated junkyards of iron defecation.
Empty shells that once had utilityrusty reflections of man's futility.
Struggling now to earn his bread,but who remembers when he's dead?

The conservation of wild life is of utmost importance.There are two types of conservation:

(a)the preservation of of the natural environment

(b)the legal protection of animals

In Malaysia, the Protection of Wildlife Act 1973 gives protection to many species of mammals and licences issued by the Game Department are necessary even for common species. 78% of Malaysia's mammals are confined to primary and tall secondary forests and 81% are restricted to areas below 600 metres. This means that the lowland forests are crucial for the continued survival of most Malaysian mammals. Their continued existence depends on the preservation of these areas.

The last of the great apes found outside Africa is the tree-dwelling ORANG-UTAN, one of the world's most extraordinary animal. It is a fascinating but unfortunately an endangered creature of the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo, it has roughly the bulk of a man. Man and ape have been in conflict for years and the future conservation of orang-utans is definitely of international concern. Rehabilitation centres have been set up at Ketambe in Sumatara and at Sepilok in Sandakan, Sabah, where illegally domesticated orang-utans are confiscated from their owners and only after successful rehabilitation are released into the wild. Their ability to lead an independent life in the wild is largely a matter of education imparted by the mother, so a tame one without rehabilitation, released and abandoned in the jungle will soon die.

Sumber- Google