{"id":620155,"date":"2026-09-10T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/620155\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T08:00:10","slug":"baby-orangutans-found-in-forest-in-india-spark-trafficking-investigation-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/620155\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby orangutans found in forest in India spark trafficking investigation | Animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Five baby orangutans have been found in a forest in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/india\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">India<\/a>, prompting authorities to investigate if they were trafficked into the country from south-east Asia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The orangutans, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2026\/may\/19\/should-we-leave-them-to-die-the-battle-over-how-to-save-orangutans-from-the-curse-of-palm-oil\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">native only to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra<\/a> and known for their shaggy red fur, were found in Balasore district of Odisha state, thousands of kilometres away from their natural habitat.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Five baby orangutans found in forest in India in suspected smuggling incident\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1125.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" class=\"dcr-11wzo8p\"\/>Five baby orangutans found in forest in India in suspected smuggling incident<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Odisha\u2019s environment minister, Ram Singh Khuntia, said wildlife investigators were trying to establish how the rare apes reached India.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cWe suspect that an international racket might be involved in this,\u201d Singh said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">International commercial trade in orangutans is prohibited under Cites \u2013 a global agreement governing trade in endangered wildlife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The five babies were found by forest department officials who were patrolling in the Jaleswar range in Balasore district.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Officials believed the orangutans had been in the area for just a few days, and they have now been placed in quarantine at a zoological park in Odisha.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">According to the World <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/wildlife\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wildlife<\/a> Fund, about 104,000 orangutans remain in Borneo and Sumatra, down from more than 230,000 a century ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), a third species, is classified as critically endangered, with fewer than 800 believed to survive in the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">In November, conservationists found the Tapanuli population had been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/jun\/10\/rainfall-landslides-climate-crisis-tapanuli-orangutan-indonesia-extreme-weather\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reduced by 7%<\/a> after severe flooding in Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Between 33 and 54 Tapanuli orangutans were estimated to have been killed in widespread floods and landslides in North Sumatra province.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Previous research has suggested annual losses of 1% of the Tapanuli orangutan population would be sufficient to lead to eventual extinction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The entire Tapanuli population dwells solely in the West Block of the Batang Toru, a forest threatened by mining, palm oil plantations and a large hydropower project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five baby orangutans have been found in a forest in India, prompting authorities to investigate if they were&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-620155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}