Illegal trafficking takes orangutans worldwide. Where are they actually from?

Orangutans are arboreal rainforest animals who spend most of their time living in trees. They depend on intact forests for food, nesting, and travelling between populations.

Orangutan | File Photo | Commons

New Delhi: Illegal wildlife trafficking often makes orangutans travel the world, particularly in Central Asia and India. However, the animals are usually found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia.

There are three recognised species of orangutans. The Bornean orangutan is found in the Indonesian and Malaysian parts of Borneo. The Sumatran orangutan is now found mostly in the northern parts of Sumatra. The Tapanuli orangutan, the rarest of the lot, is found only in the ecosystem around the Batang Toru River in north Sumatra. The Tapanuli orangutan was formally recognised as a separate species only in 2017, with a population of less than 800 animals confined to 1,420 sq km, according to the IUCN.

Orangutans are primarily arboreal rainforest animals who spend most of their time living in trees. They depend on intact forests for food and nesting, and rely on trees to be able to travel between populations. When such forests grow fragmented, it can often isolate orangutan populations, making it harder for them to interact with others of their kind. 

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Bornean orangutan is classified as ‘endangered’ with only 1,04,700 individuals remaining in the world. The other two kinds are classified as ‘critically endangered’. Only 13,846 Sumatran orangutans exist today.

Endangered species

One of the main threats to orangutan populations is deforestation. As forests are cleared for oil-palm plantations, agriculture, growing timber, or other purposes, the mature trees that orangutans rely on are chopped down. Mining adds to this pressure on the great apes. 

WWF estimates that Bornean orangutan populations have declined by over 50 per cent in the past 60 years, and their habitat has reduced by at least 55 per cent in the past two decades.

Another major threat to orangutan populations is catastrophic forest fires. In 1997 and 1998, forest fires in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, are likely to have killed nearly 8,000 orangutans.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)