Mongabay series: Great Apes

Against all odds, a young illegally trafficked chimpanzee held in a tiny cage at a private zoo in war-torn Iraqi Kurdistan has been rescued, and has arrived safely at a…

Thailand is failing to control illegal trade in apes because of inadequate legislation, according to two new reports by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. The numbers of apes in Thailand’s…

The third largest orangutan population in West Kalimantan in danger of losing its home, warns Erik Meijaard, an ecologist with the Borneo Futures initiative.

BUKIT LAWANG, Indonesia — About a dozen foreign tourists clamored around an orangutan and her young child. “Can I take a photo with her?” a tanktop-clad backpacker asked. “Of course,”…

KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of the Congo - I came out of my room and a park ranger was standing just outside the door with an AK-47 in his hands.…

Try to get your head around this one. There is this beautiful natural forest area in West Kalimantan, called Sungai Putri, which roughly translates as the River of the Princess.…

The effort to rescue and rehabilitate Indonesia’s captive orangutans received a boost last week when 10 of the primates were released in a national park in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part…

he oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is quite an appealing crop to growers, investors and consumers. It produces not just one but two types of oil, with a vast number of…

The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is now critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This change means that both species of orangutan now face an…

n estimated 1,500 orangutans now live in rescue and rehabilitation centers located across Sumatra and Borneo. As habitat loss due to deforestation and forest fires continues, these institutions are struggling…

n the library shelves of its Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) has row upon row of bound volumes, each bearing the…

ver the last four decades, industrial agriculture has been a boon to Southeast Asia, but it also helped destroy more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforest — one of the…

ameroon’s Korup National Park is home to elephants, chimpanzees, red colobus monkeys, drill, and a myriad of noisy species, whose squawks, squeals and howls fill the forest air. For more…

t’s no secret: one of the biggest threats facing the world’s great ape populations is industrial agricultural, now rapidly extending throughout their native home ranges in Africa and Southeast Asia…

ive years ago, some 7,000-acres of logged forest in the Kalabakan River network of Sabah, on the island of Borneo, was slated for oil palm production. Imperial College London ecologist…

"Hell for people and paradise for orangutans,” is how Ian Singleton, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP), describes intact Indonesian peat swamp forests. With their high daily temperatures…

frica is similar to other developing regions of the world in that agriculture is central to the continent’s economy, composing almost one quarter of its GNP and employing nearly two-thirds…

For two decades, a devastating civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) prevented scientists from monitoring Grauer’s gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri). But now, data from recent surveys…

This is the second in a four-part series on palm oil in Cameroon. Read the first, third, and fourth parts for more discussion on the topic. n Cameroon’s 500,000-hectare (1,931-square mile)…

he countries of Gabon, Liberia, Indonesia and Myanmar may not seem to hold much in common, but each of these countries — two in West Africa and two in East…

he adolescent orangutan was captured in the forests of Sumatra by a soldier at the height of the Aceh province civil war for independence. By February of 2004, this orangutan…

oop,” went the hi-tech pressurized Spezialgeräte GmbH Telinject gun. And yet again “foop.” The crack sniper from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) lumbered about on the boggy forest floor,…

s global markets increasingly clamor for palm oil, used in everything from soap to processed foods, companies are actively scouting out prime places to produce that oil, and governments are…

ven the most celebrated conservation successes can seemingly be undone overnight. That was the hard lesson Takeshi Furuichi learned when conflict erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),…

There may be more orangutans in Sumatra than we thought, but that is the only good news found in a paper published today in the journal Science Advances. The authors…

The shocking image of a burnt orangutan mother and its baby this week really brought it home: All orangutans are Critically Endangered. This used to be the privileged status of…

he long-limbed, canopy-swinging, duet-singing gibbons of Southeast Asia are under threat as industrial agriculture eats into their forest habitat. Palm oil plantation expansion is famously bad news for all sorts…

here the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park ends, crops and gardens begin — as do wildlife conflicts with local communities. Crop raiding mountain gorillas who venture beyond the confines of the…

n December of last year, a small group of government officials took a long arduous trip to visit the site of a remote palm oil plantation in the Republic of…

n September 9, I arrived back in Mombasa, Kenya, after an investigative mission to Dubai and Egypt for the independent conservationist Karl Ammann. No region of the world makes it…