Professor Predicts Orangutan Extinction

If current rates of habitat destruction continue, orangutans will be extinct within 10 to 20 years, according to an article published by a Harvard researcher in this month’s National Geographic magazine.

“More than 80 percent of the orangutans’ habitat have been destroyed,” Assistant Professor of Anthropology Cheryl D. Knott said. “Pressures around the world are pushing this unique species toward the brink of extinction.”

Knott has studied these animals for over 10 years in Gunung Palung National Park on Borneo, Indonesia, which is home to about one tenth of the world’s orangutan population. They are the world’s largest exclusively tree-dwelling mammal, and they have the longest birth interval—only giving birth every eight years.

According to Knott, there are only 15,000 to 24,000 orangutans left in the world—and their numbers are decreasing fast.

Knott’s colleagues say her research has made a significant impact.

“The fact is that we still know extraordinarily little about orangutans, and it is a very important species because of its close relationship to us, yet it is trembling on the edge of extinction,” said Richard Wrangham, curator of primate behavioral biology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Wrangham described Knott’s work as “absolutely [the] highest quality research in the field.”

Knott said this impending extinction of one of the human species’ closest relatives impacts the world both from a biological and humanistic level.

“Besides the fact that we are the dominant species and have the obligation to protect other species, the loss of habitat [of orangutans] impacts the rainforest, its inhabitants and people across the world,” she said.

The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia are trying to help preserve orangutan habitats by sending in police patrols, according to Knott. However, illegal logging still runs rampant as “logger bosses” encroach away from rivers’ edges and cut increasingly into the rainforest.

“[I believe that] there needs to be a more continuous, concentrated effort on the government’s part,” she said.

Knott said students can help preserve habitats for orangutans by supporting the U.S. Great Ape Conservation Act fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other conservation agencies fighting to preserve habitats for endangered species.

“I think that international pressure helps—one person can make a big difference,” said Knott, noting that several Harvard students have worked with her in the past, many of whom took a year off between graduating from college and pursuing a higher degree.

In addition to receiving a grant from National Geographic, Knott also receives funding from the Leakey Foundation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Science Foundation.

“Cheryl Knott is one of the world’s leading field researchers studying orangutans in the wild. She embodies the National Geographic mission —leading a research project that is answering basic questions about wild orangutans while at the same time working to conserve a species that is fighting for survival,” said Barbara Moffet, a National Geographic spokesperson.

Knott, who obtained her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1999, currently researches the evolutionary implications of two types of males in orangutan society.

This fall, she is teaching several classes, including Anthropology 125, “Primate Evolutionary Ecology: Research Seminar,” Anthropology 125, “Primate and Human Nutrition: Research Seminar” and Anthropology 138, “The Behavioral Biology of Women.”

“Cheryl Knott is one of the most deeply committed young primatologists that I know, who is equally concerned with their conservation and the most basic aspects of their physiology and biology,” said David Pilbeam, curator of paleoanthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.