A group of baby orangutans have been found in a forest in India, thousands of kilometers away from their natural habitat, raising the alarm about possible illegal smuggling.
Orangutans are native only to Borneo and Sumatra, two islands in Southeast Asia, and are distinguished by their sparse reddish-orange fur and long, powerful arms. Their presence in Odisha, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal, prompted environmental officials in the region to open an investigation into trafficking.
“We suspect that an international racket may be involved in this,” Odisha Environment Minister Ram Singh Khuntia told Indo-Asian News Service.
The five children were discovered by forest department officials who were patrolling the Jaleswar mountain range in Balasore district. The Guardian I mentioned.
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The British newspaper said that officials suspect that the orangutans were in the area for a few days before they were found, and they have since been placed in quarantine in a government zoo.
The species is critically endangered, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora makes it illegal to trade orangutans commercially.
Footage of the children spread online, showing zookeepers feeding the children fruit and milk while they played among themselves.
Balasore district forest officer Prateek Prakash Indhalkar said. Indian Express The children – three males and two females – were rescued earlier this week and taken for medical examinations at Nandankanan Zoo.
“We rescued 5 orangutan babies and took them to the forest office. 4 of the 5 babies are healthy. Veterinarians are examining and treating them,” he told the outlet, adding that the babies have been put on a special diet; My two younger ones eat mostly mashed potatoes and mashed apples, while the slightly older siblings can eat solid foods.
According to World Wildlife FundThere are about 104,700 Bornean orangutans, 13,846 Sumatran orangutans, and 800 Tapanuli orangutans remaining in the wild. In the past 100 years, the population has declined significantly, compared to an estimated population of 230,000 a century ago.
The Tapanuli orangutan, the third species declared in 2017, is the most endangered of all great apes. About seven percent of the population was wiped out last year in severe floods in Indonesia, according to a Reuters report in June.
At least 58 Tapanuli orangutans, endemic to an area around the Batang Toro forest in North Sumatra, died in the floods, the report said, citing a survey of the western block of the forest that is home to the majority of the total population of 800 primates.
Their livelihoods are also threatened by poaching, mining, palm oil plantations, a hydropower construction project in the western block of the forest, as well as human-caused climate change.
Humans and orangutans share 97% of their DNA; This compares to about 99 percent similarity between humans and chimpanzees, according to National Institutes of Health.
Sequencing the orangutan genome revealed that the species evolved much more slowly than its close relatives, chimpanzees and humans, over tens of millions of years.
– With files from Reuters
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