Borneo, Indonesia
The accelerated destruction of Borneo's rain forest threatens to wipe out the orangutans that call it home

It's feeding time at Camp Leakey. Tom, a 23-year-old, 300-pound orangutan, has just come back after spending two months in the protected forests of the surrounding Tanjung Puting National Park, in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. He and a few fellow orangutans calmly chomp on cassava roots and drink the milk set out for them on a giant wooden platform here in the equatorial rain forest, looking blissfully unaware of a looming danger. "About seven years ago, there were no males at feeding time," explains Cecep Munadjat, the camp's director of information. "Now, as many as five can show up, which means it's getting harder to find food in the jungle."

Camp Leakey, an orangutan research and rehabilitation center in Tanjung Puting National Park, is one of the many highlights for visitors to Kalimantan—an emerald-green jungle broken up by Mississippi River–size waterways that flow into the sea from the mountain highlands and which is home to the planet's largest population of wild orangutans. The camp was founded in 1971 by Birute Galdikas, a Canadian anthropologist and the foremost authority on the primates, who now fears for their survival.

Illegal logging was once considered the greatest threat to the estimated 50,000 orangutans left on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, and it has decimated 80 percent of their habitat over the past 20 years. But conservationists are now more worried about Indonesia's plan to produce biofuel: Over the next five years, the government intends to turn 12 million acres of land into palm oil plantations to supply biofuel to wealthier nations. The widespread cultivation of palm, say environmentalists, could wipe out the only remaining habitat in which orangutans can survive as well as endanger many other species in Kalimantan. For their part, officials accuse conservationists of putting the welfare of primates above that of humans. "This is about poverty reduction," says Al Hilal Hamdi, head of the government agency in charge of biofuel development. "If we don't give people work, they will just go back into the forests as illegal loggers." With some 40 million Indonesians living below the poverty line and almost as many unemployed, the government is looking for ways to stave off massive social unrest.

But Galdikas dismisses the argument that she and her foundation place the interests of orangutans over humans, stressing that the animals' existence is crucial to the rain forest ecosystem. "We are facing the disappearance of a species that numbered more than three hundred thousand a century ago," she explains. "There is so little virgin forest left that orangutans could starve to death if something is not done soon."

And the orangutans aren't the only animals at risk: Kalimantan's rain forest is home to 13 species of primates and hundreds of species of reptiles, amphibians, and birds. (Since 2005, scientists have discovered at least 53 new types of plants and animals, including a snake capable of changing colors.) Galdikas and other local conservationists are not only urging the government to reconsider its plan to export palm oil, they are also hoping that increased tourism will draw international attention to the problem and provide a livelihood for locals.