10 min. of conflict prevention for monkeys and humans in Indonesia

"For scientists, orangutans are an endangered species. For animal rights activists, they are pitiable creatures. For farmers, they are nothing but a plague" (Reinhardt, Stern 2019). According to a 2018 study, the population of Bornean orangutans declined by 100,000 individuals between 1999 and 2015 (Voigt et al., 2018). The ongoing loss of habitat forces these animals into fragmented and shrinking rainforests, where they must forage even in human settlements. This leads to human-animal conflicts, which often result in the killing of the animals. A 2023 study (Massingham E. et al., 2023) confirms the findings of earlier studies, showing that human-animal conflicts frequently lead to cases of orangutan deaths. Researchers have investigated the reasons behind the killings of orangutans (Davis et al., 2013). The primary causes are human-animal conflicts, often triggered by orangutans raiding crops, and hunting by poachers, who mostly kill orangutan mothers to sell their babies on the black market (ibid.). This occurs especially in villages on the outskirts of rainforests with large orangutan populations, where villagers, including loggers, enter the forest, and orangutans often venture into nearby settlements in search of food. The long-term consequence of these conflicts could be the extinction of the orangutan.