Orangutan Island

Wild orangutans are threatened with extinction within six years.

In Borneo illegal logging and palm oil plantations are destroying the orangutan's habitat forcing them into contact with their only predator, man.

Approximately 13 orangutans are being killed everyday - 5,000 a year. Scientists estimate 30,000 left in the wild but worse, the World Bank predicts that the Indonesian jungle will disappear by 2010 if illegal logging and expansion of palm oil plantations are allowed to continue at the current rate.

The best advocates for the species are 35 orphaned teenage orangutans who live on a river-locked island in Central Kalimantan.

Natural History New Zealand is on the island filming their adaptation to community life. The 26-part documentary of their social evolution is one of Animal Planet's top rating shows and the New Zealand team hope that telling the orangutans' stories might be in time to save the species.