Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched on Monday an action plan to protect the nation's disappearing orangutans.
The president said that if the world community fails to heed his country's action plan, orangutans could face a fate of extinction by the year 2050.
The Strategy and Action Plan for National Conservation of Orangutans, authored by the Indonesian ministry of Forestry Directorate Conservation and Nature Protection, presents the first specific, enforceable agenda to save orangutans from extinction.
The plan commits to maintain orangutan populations above critical thresholds at which their populations may fail to recover. A core target of the plan is to stabilize orangutan populations and habitat from now until 2017.
The idea for the plan sprang form a forum of scientists in 2004that reviewed data on the viability of orangutan populations and habitats.
The review showed that about 6,650 Sumatran orangutans and 55,000 Bornean orangutans remained in the wild, but most local populations were small, isolated and vulnerable.
Deforestation had directly and indirectly led to 3,000 orangutan deaths per year since 1970s.
The Indonesian president chose to launch the Orangutan Action Plan at the United Nations climate change conference now taking place in Bali, a resort island of Indonesia.
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