Orangutan

A wildfire came within meters of an orangutan rehabilitation center in Indonesian Borneo, forcing emergency firefighting efforts to protect more than 60 rescued orangutans. The close call comes as a strengthening El Niño fuels fires across Indonesian Borneo, where prolonged drought and expanding land clearing are driving orangutans from their…

In Indonesian Borneo, conservation organization KehatiKu is testing a new approach: paying local people to photograph wildlife and upload the sightings through an app. In just one year, the project has collected around 175,000 records. Participants can earn about $6 for a photo of an orangutan, while smaller payments are…

EAST ACEH, Indonesia — A court in Indonesia has sentenced a man in Aceh to three years in prison after investigators stopped him while driving a truck transporting dozens of live animals, among them a live Sumatran orangutan and two critically endangered birds. A panel of three judges ruled on…

A Tapanuli orangutan in Batang Toru, North Sumatra. These critically endangered animals are threatened by climate change-fueled extreme weather. Orangutan Information Centre A cyclone that brought catastrophic flooding and devastating landslides to Indonesia wiped out more than 7% of the global population of the world’s rarest great apes, a new…

767 individuals made up the entire species of Tapanuli orangutans in 2019, according to an estimate. (Image credit: Nature Picture Library via Alamy) A single climate-change-fueled cyclone killed 7% of Tapanuli orangutans ‪—‬ the world's rarest great apes ‪—‬ in just four days last year, new research reveals. The study…

JAKARTA — Fires have burned part of a decade-long orangutan habitat restoration site in Indonesian Borneo, raising fears among conservationists that another severe fire season could wipe out years of recovery efforts before the dry season has even fully begun. A decade ago, Yayasan IAR Indonesia (YIARI...Read More

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time using a human-made canopy bridge to cross a public road on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, conservationists said Monday. Rapid development has been shrinking the jungle habitat of the critically endangered species, and fatal conflicts with people…

KehatiKu, a conservation program in Indonesian Borneo, pays citizen observers to document wildlife sightings and upload them via an app. Payments vary by species, with the highest rate, around $6, paid for verified orangutan sightings. Dedicated observers can make more than they would be paid at a full-time job. By…

For months, four infant orangutans lived in limbo in Thailand — not as pets, but as evidence. Confiscated in two separate trafficking cases, they were cared for at the Khao Pratubchang Wildlife Rescue Centre while investigators built their files. On Dec. 23, 2025, the babies finally came home: three Sumatran…

The Indonesian government said it has revoked the licenses of 28 companies for violating forestry regulations in provinces hit by devastating flooding in November. A rare equatorial cyclone, which caused widespread landslides across northern Sumatra, killed some 1,200 people and decimated the population of a critically endangered orangutan that was…