TOKYO-2019 Editorial / Environmental

Saving Orangutans

  • Prize
    Gold in Editorial/Environmental
  • Photographer
    Alain Schroeder
  • Photo Date
    2018-2019

Indonesia’s Sumatran orangutan is under severe threat from the incessant and ongoing depletion and fragmentation of the rainforest.  As palm oil and rubber plantations, logging, road construction, mining, hunting continue to proliferate, orangutans are being forced out of their natural rainforest habitat.  Organizations rescue orangutans in difficulty (lost, injured, captive...) with the final goal to reintroduce them into the wild and to create genetically viable populations in protected forests. Today, with 14,000 specimens left, the Sumatran orangutan is listed as critically endangered.