Deforestation is the action of clearing a wide area of trees. Deforestation has been a practice for 10,000 years to make room for livestock and crops, but only since the 1920s has deforestation gone up drastically. In the past 20 years we have lost a total of 8% of rainforests.
How does it impact the orangutans?
Because of the deforestation of the Southeast Asian rainforests the orangutans population has gone from a century ago being around 230,000 and now the Borneo orangutans population has dropped down to 104,700 (endangered) whilst the Sumatrans population is 7,500 (now critically endangered), and the most threatened species of orangutan, the Tapanuli orangutan with 800 left.
Who causes deforestation and why?
Recent study by the Thomas Reuters Foundation have discovered that banks are one of many responsible for the deforestation of the south east asian rainforests as they are lending company's billions of dollars to rainforest destruction. An investigation found that 38 billion dollars worth of loans were leased to 50 companies during 2010-2015 for production operations.