• Bornean Orangutan (Page 16)
• Philippine Forest Turtle (Page 18)
• Giant Panda (Page 26)
• Blue Whale (Page 32)
• Bluefin Tuna (Page 40)
• Scalloped Hammerhead Shark (Page 46)
OUR SPECIES, Homo sapiens, has conquered the world. For most of our existence, roughly 300 millennia, our numbers have risen gradually: Around 2,000 years ago, it is estimated that there were about 170 million people on Earth. But with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and modern medicine in the 19th century, the human population exploded, skyrocketing from a billion in 1800 to almost 7.9 billion today. By some estimates, there will be 11.5 billion of us by 2100.
That’s very bad news for the planet. As the population has ballooned and our cities have mushroomed and multiplied, humans have drastically and irreversibly altered the landscape and ecology of the places they inhabit. The sheer number of humans has made it impossible to use Earth’s resources sustainably, and in just a few hundred years, those resources have been rapidly depleted, threatening the environment, plant and animal life, even the very air we breathe.
All the ways in which humans have destroyed the planet form a long and ignominious list. From widespread destruction of forests for material to build infrastructure to massive land conversion for agricultural usage; from unchecked processing of consumable animals to emptying the oceans of every conceivable species of fish, the negative effects humans are having on the environment is both profound and deeply concerning.
Humanity’s detrimental impacts are visible everywhere, but scientific research paints an even grimmer picture. A 2020 study in the journal Science Advances found that human activities have caused 96 percent of global mammal extinctions over the past 126,000 years. “These extinctions did not happen continuously and at constant pace,” says lead author Tobias Andermann from Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. “Instead, bursts of extinctions are detected across different continents at times when humans first reached them. More recently, the magnitude of human driven extinctions has picked up the pace again, this time on a global scale.”
Highlights
There are currently 138,374 species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Even more worryingly, 38,543 of them are threatened with extinction.
Asia, the most rapidly developing part of the world, is contributing most significantly to this human-induced species decline. But just as the continent is a huge part of the problem, it can also play a central role in the solutions we devise to protect these species.
Bornean Orangutan
THE ORANGUTAN, roughly translating from Malay as “man of the forest”, is a great ape that inhabits the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. Classified under the genus Pongo, they were once considered a single species but have now been divided into three: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus), Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii), and Tapanuli orangutan (P. tapanuliensis).
Largely arboreal in nature, orangutans have evolved to have long arms and shorter legs to help them navigate the trees and construct elaborate sleeping nests. They typically have reddish-brown fur covering their bodies, and adult males can weight up to 90 kilograms, with dominant males developing prominent cheek pads called flanges. These flanged males also have throat sacs used for loud vocalisation. Unflanged males look much like female adults.
Orangutans used to be a common sight all throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Unfortunately, they are now only found in parts of Sumatra and Borneo, with their number constantly decreasing. Over the past 60 years, their population has declined by over 50 percent while their habitat has been reduced by a similar amount in the past two decades.
Highlights
According to the World Wildlife Fund, just a century ago, more than 230,000 orangutans could be found in the wild. Today, the Bornean species is estimated to number around 100,000, while there are only about 7,500 Sumatran orangutans left. Both are classified as “Critically Endangered”
“They typically have reddish-brown fur covering their bodies, and adult males can weight up to 90 kilograms, with dominant males developing prominent cheek pads called flanges”
Philippine Forest Turtle
THE Philippine forest turtle (Siebenrockiella leytensis), also known as the Philippine pond turtle or Palawan turtle, is a species of freshwater turtle endemic throughout the Palawan group of islands, which stretches between Mindoro island in the northeast and Borneo in the Southwest.
They have brown to reddish or even black carapaces that can reach a length of up to 30 centimetres and uniquely shaped vertebral scutes reminiscent of ginkgo seeds, making them highly recognisable. The turtle also has a pale white or yellow strip that runs across its head behind the ears, earning it the nickname “bowtie turtle”.
Very little is known about the species, and they remain relatively obscure in the mainstream media, though they have been gaining more attention in recent years They were first classified as by American herpetologist Edward Harrison Taylor in 1920 based on a male and female specimen he collected from the swamps of Cabalian in Southern Leyte (now known as San Juan). Unfortunately, the specimens were destroyed in World War II during a bombing of Manila. The next time a specimen was seen was more than four decades later, in 1988, brought in by
