Orangutans once thrived in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. Now, they live only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where numbers have plunged by more than 50% in the past 60 years.
The biggest threats are logging and farming, which ravage the rainforest and increase the risk of orangutans clashing with humans.
In this project, Orangutans: A Conservation Bombshell, The Guardian untangles a new and controversial debate about how to protect this much loved, endangered species.
After over 30 years of moving the apes to a safer place, the conservation world has been hit by bombshell: "Wild-to-wild translocations" do more harm than good, according to a new study. A third of captured orangutans make their way back to their original home, the study said. They can struggle to find food and get attacked by "unfriendly neighbours."
The answer is for humans and orangutans "to coexist alongside each other, akin to how it is with foxes in the U.K.," said Julie Sherman, director of Wildlife Impact and co-author of the study.
This view clashes with Karmele Llano Sánchez, founder of Yiari, an orangutan conservation charity based in Borneo. She believes the study is "sensationalist" and hugely damaging—not just for orangutans, but for conservation worldwide—and argues for a more pragmatic approach.
"I'm not saying that 100% of the orangutans we've rescued have survived, but if we hadn't rescued them, they would be 100% dead, for sure," she said.
