Five baby orangutans were found in a forest in India’s eastern state of Odisha, thousands of kilometres from their natural habitat, prompting an investigation into how they got there, BBC News reported.
Locals spotted the young apes in Balasore district early Tuesday and alerted forest officials. The animals were given first aid and taken to Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar for quarantine. Orangutans are not native to India; the critically endangered apes live in the wild only in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Odisha’s forest minister said investigators are examining whether an international smuggling network trafficked the animals and abandoned them near a highway. Balasore District Forest Officer Pratik Prakash Indalkar told the BBC they could not have arrived naturally and may have been transported by road. They were found in Ranakata, a proposed reserve forest in Bhogarai block near the West Bengal border, close to a state highway.
Officials believe the orangutans had been in the area only two or three days. A forest search found no other orangutans or clues. Young orangutans normally stay with their mothers for years; five infants together with no adults nearby raised immediate trafficking concerns. Commercial trade in orangutans is banned under CITES. In 2022, two baby orangutans were found abandoned near the Assam–Mizoram border in a similar case.
Sources: BBC News
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