Sumatran and Bornean orangutans face existential threats from palm oil plantation expansion that destroys and fragments their forest habitat, causing direct welfare harms to displaced individuals.
Orangutans displaced by deforestation face acute welfare crises — mothers with dependent infants who cannot move through fragmented forest, individuals entering plantations to find food and encountering hostile workers, and infants separated from killed mothers who face years of traumatic isolation. These are not abstract statistics but documented events that happen to individual great apes with complex emotional and cognitive lives. Consumer choices about palm oil source influence the economic incentives that drive or reduce deforestation, making purchasing decisions a direct welfare intervention for orangutans whose survival depends on forest remaining intact.