Orangutans are losing their forest habitat at catastrophic rates due to palm oil plantation expansion, causing severe welfare harm to displaced and orphaned individuals.
Palm oil deforestation creates multiple welfare harms simultaneously: displacement from home ranges, starvation as forest food resources disappear, killing of adults treated as pests, and orphaning of infants who face years in rehabilitation before independent survival is possible. Orangutans are highly intelligent, solitary apes with long childhoods and complex learning requirements. Each individual killed or displaced represents years of accumulated ecological knowledge lost — and significant individual suffering.