Odisha: Five baby orangutans found in India forest spark trafficking investigation – BBC News
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Baby orangutans found in Indian forest spark trafficking inquiry
Image source:
Nandankanan, Bhubaneswar
Image caption:
Orangutans are critically endangered species and not native to India
By
Nikita Yadav
, BBC News, Delhi
and
Subrat Kumar Pati
, Odisha
Published 1 hour ago
Five baby orangutans have been found in a forest in India’s eastern state of Odisha, far from their natural habitat, prompting an investigation into how they got there.
Photographs and videos widely shared online show the young apes sitting together on the forest floor and eating bananas, thousands of kilometres from the tropical rainforests where they belong.
Orangutans are not native to India. The critically endangered apes are found in the wild only in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Odisha’s forest minister has said investigators are examining whether the animals were trafficked into the country by an international smuggling network and abandoned near a highway.
The orangutans were rescued early on Tuesday in Balasore district after local people spotted them and alerted forest officials. They were given first aid before being taken to Nandankanan Zoological Park in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, where they are in quarantine and being monitored.
Balasore District Forest Officer Pratik Prakash Indalkar told the BBC that the animals could not have reached Odisha naturally and may have been transported there by road.
"The five animals were found in Ranakata, a proposed reserve forest in Bhogarai block, near the West Bengal border," he said. "The area is covered mainly by casuarina trees and is not a dense forest. It is also close to a state highway."
The Odisha government has also reportedly asked India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau to investigate. Police, forest officials, and a special task force are involved in the inquiry.
Image source: ANI
Image caption:
The apes were found by locals in a forest in India’s Odisha state
Forest officials believe the orangutans had been in the area for only two or three days. A search of the forest found no other orangutans or clues as to how the animals got there, Indalkar said.
Officials described them to the BBC as infants, although some local reports suggest they are between one and two years old.
Their young age makes their discovery particularly concerning, wildlife expert Biswajit Mohanty said. Young orangutans typically remain with their mothers for several years, learning the skills they need to survive independently. Females also reproduce slowly, usually giving birth only once every eight years.
The discovery of five young orangutans together, thousands of kilometres from their natural habitat and with no adult animals nearby, has therefore raised concerns about how they came to be in Odisha.
Image source: NurPhoto via Getty Images
Image caption:
The orangutan is found in rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia
There are three known living species of orangutan – Bornean, Sumatran, and Tapanuli – all of which are classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN.
Over the years, their numbers have declined sharply because of deforestation, habitat loss, and hunting. International commercial trade in orangutans is prohibited under Cites – the global agreement governing trade in endangered wildlife. They are also protected under Indian wildlife laws. Despite this, orangutans continue to be trafficked for sale as exotic pets and to private collectors.
This is not the first time…
