It had nowhere to run.
Somewhere in Indonesia, an orangutan emerged from among the trees it had left and stood in front of a yellow excavator. The machine kept moving forward, tearing up the earth where there had once been rainforest. The animal tried with its own hands to push it, climb onto it, and stop it. There was no way it could win that fight, but it tried anyway 🦧.
The video, published in June 2018, shows in just a few seconds what deforestation in Indonesia does every day: destroying the homes of thousands of orangutans to make way for oil palm plantations. Every tree that falls is one less piece of a territory that has already been reduced by half in recent decades.
No one knows what happened to that orangutan after the camera stopped recording. But its gesture remained as a reminder that, while we debate progress, someone else loses their only home 🌍.