Five baby orangutans sat motherless in a forest in Odisha, India — thousands of miles from home — when rangers on patrol in Balasore district stumbled upon them on a Tuesday. The critically endangered apes, each about a year and a half old with the shaggy red fur the species is famous for, appeared healthy. Now Indonesian authorities are working to bring them back home.
Orangutans in the wild live only on two islands: Sumatra and Borneo, the latter shared between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. So when five of these babies turned up in eastern India, wildlife officials smelled something wrong. They suspect the animals were trafficked into the country, and a criminal investigation is now underway. The rescued infants are being cared for at a zoo while their future is sorted out.
Indonesia's forestry ministry believes the babies are of Sumatran origin, but it isn't taking chances. DNA tests will confirm exactly where the young apes came from before they are sent back. The ministry has already asked India to hand over the primates, according to spokesman Ristianto Pribadi, and talks are moving through the Indian embassy in Jakarta.
Why all the fuss over five small apes? Because Sumatran orangutans are in serious trouble. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — the global group that tracks endangered species — lists them as critically endangered. Their numbers are so low that the last full count, back in 2016, put the entire population at just over 13,500. To put that in perspective, these baby apes are part of a species fighting to survive, and they aren't even weaned from their mothers until they're about seven years old.
The Sumatran orangutan's decline is driven mostly by habitat loss and fragmentation as humans push deeper into the forest, plus illegal hunting. Even their cousins are struggling — the Tapanuli orangutan, another species that calls Sumatra home, is also critically endangered, with fewer than 800 believed to remain in the wild.
There's debate about how fast to bring the babies home. Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of the Orangutan Information Centre, an NGO, supports repatriation as the top priority — he thinks the DNA tests can even be done after the apes are back on Indonesian soil. Jakarta has also reached out to conservation groups to help rehabilitate the young orangutans once they arrive.
The timing adds urgency. Wild orangutans have been under heavy pressure in recent weeks from forest fires that have scorched swaths of Borneo. In West Kalimantan province, at least 15 apes have been rescued from flames and haze since July, some found stuck in plantations after fires cut off their path home. For these five babies, though, the journey home is just beginning — and for a species teetering on the edge, every single orangutan brought back safely counts.