Orangutans are critically threatened by deforestation. The welfare implications of habitat loss extend beyond population decline to the suffering of displaced individuals.
Orangutan habitat loss creates profound individual welfare suffering that accompanies the population-level conservation crisis. Displaced orangutans entering agricultural land face harassment, injury, and killing. Infants orphaned when mothers are killed face years of rehabilitation — orangutans have the longest mother-infant dependency of any non-human primate — and the psychological trauma of losing a mother is significant for these cognitively sophisticated animals. Sanctuary orangutans demonstrate enduring psychological impacts from early trauma including abnormal behaviour patterns. The scale of suffering from the ongoing deforestation crisis is enormous, and addressing it requires both conservation action and consumer pressure on the industries driving forest loss.