HABITAT PONGO

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. – Chief Seattle
Of the nearly 250,000 flowering plants known, 170,000 or 68 percent occur in the tropics and subtropics, making tropical rainforests among the most diverse and complex living environments on Earth. Those of the Far East, including Borneo and Sumatra, may be some of the most complex of all. For a hint of the diversity, Borneo and Sumatra represent 1.3% of Indonesia’s landmass but they support 10% of its known plant species, 12.5% of its mammals, and 17% of its other vertebrates. Borneo alone has 10,000-15,000 species of flowering plants.
That is as rich as the whole of Africa, which is 40 times larger, and 10 times richer than the British Isles.
Each of these organisms is dependent on the whole ecosystem functioning – like a house of cards is dependent on all of its cards. If whole areas of forest are clear-cut, the whole system fails; habitats for thousands of species disappear, and are lost forever. Once the forest is gone, the tropical, acidic, and nutrient poor soils make it difficult for crops to prosper for more than a few years, eventually being replaced by weeds or coarse grasses such as alang-alang in Indonesia.
The value of biological diversity and the rainforest can only be estimated.
Every time an acre of rainforest is burned or chopped down, we might lose a cure for cancer or AIDS. Scientists have already seen it happen. A chemical that was a potential cure for AIDS was found in the bark of a gum tree in Malaysia (Sarawak). Scientists took a sample of the bark and studied it to see if it killed the AIDS virus. The results looked good, so the scientists returned to Malaysia to get more samples for further study. When they got there, the tree was gone, chopped down and made into plywood.