22/10/2009 (Cosmos Magazine) - Cinta, a baby orangutan found lost and alone in a vast Borneo palm oil plantation, now clings to a tree at a sanctuary for the great apes, staring intently at dozens of tourists.

She is one of the casualties of the boom in palm oil - used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine - which has seen swathes of jungle felled in Borneo, an island split between Malaysia and Indonesia.

There are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80% of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia's Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak. A 2007 assessment by the United Nations Environment Program warned that the charismatic red-haired apes will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current deforestation trends continue.

Stung by criticism of its environmental record, Malaysian palm oil industry officials pledged at a conference earlier this month to fund the establishment of wildlife corridors that experts say could help save the species.

"The major issue we face with orangutans today is what we called the fragmented population," said Marc Ancrenaz from the environmental group Hutan. "True enough there are 11,000 orangutans in (Sabah) but they are split up in many small populations, and many of these populations are not connected any more," he told the conference near Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.

An aerial survey carried out by Hutan and wildlife authorities in eastern Sabah last year revealed some 1,000 orangutan treetop "nests" located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.

Isolated from each other, the tiny communities are at risk of inbreeding and also of simply becoming lost in the vastness of the plantations - just like three-year-old Cinta and the five other young apes at the Tuaran sanctuary. After becoming separated from their mothers, they were rescued from certain death and sent to the forested reserve, situated near a string of luxury beachside resorts north of Kota Kinabalu.

As well as destroying their jungle habitat, the expansion of palm oil, which now covers nearly one fifth of Sabah alone, poses other risks to the endangered species. Orangutans that damage the palm oil fruits can be hunted down and killed, and it is quite common for young apes to be captured and kept as pets by villagers living alongside the plantations.