Rapid deforestation could see Sumatran orangutan extinct within two decades, animal charities warn

One of the world's critically-endangered animals, the Sumatran orangutan, could be extinct within two decades, charities working to protect the animals have warned.

The primates' rainforest habit on the Indonesian island of Sumatra faces unprecedented pressure over palm oil plantations. Millions of locals depend on the crop for a living.

Many orangutans are killed my farmers as they search for food on the fringes of plantations, while their young are captured and sold as pets, BBC reports.

One large orangutan was shot by farmers 62 times, including twice in one eye and once in another.

"He's going to spend the rest of his days as a captured animal,” the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme's Dr Ian Singleton told BBC.

"Plantations will say, 'Oh, orangutans come out of the forest to eat our palm oil seedlings', but they’ll eat palm oil seedlings the same way that a shipwrecked mariner will eat his shoes or his belt, you know? It's not food, it's just the only thing there that they can try and survive with."