Bengaluru: On September 8, villagers spotted five orangutans in the Ranakantha reserve forest in Odisha’s Balasore district. State authorities immediately rescued them. What has shocked everyone, conservationists and the public alike, is that these animals are very young: aged just between six and eight months old. They are infants who, under ideal circumstances, should have been clutching onto their mothers in the rainforest canopies of Indonesia where they really belong.How did five infant orangutans, belonging to a Critically Endangered species that are native to only Indonesia and Malaysia, end up in the forests of Odisha? Where are they now, and what does their future hold?The Wire breaks this down for you.Why were the infant orangutans in Odisha?“There is no doubt that the orangutans were illegally trafficked into India,” Jose Louies, CEO of the Wildlife Trust of India, told The Wire. Louies has been studying patterns of illegal wildlife trade for more than two decades.Orangutans of all species (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli) are found only in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which lists wildlife into different categories based on the threats they face, lists all these species as Critically Endangered. Habitat loss and hunting are their biggest threats. Infants are particularly coveted in the illegal pet trade internationally.How could animals found thousands of kilometers away across an ocean have reached Odisha? The five infant orangutans could been smuggled into the state via a sea route from Aceh in northern Indonesia, according to conservation scientist Sinan Serhadli, who works as an adviser for the Yayasan Orangutan Sumatera Lestari-Orangutan Information Centre (YOSL-OIC) in Sumatra.“There is a lot of orangutan trafficking happening at Aceh, most of our confiscations happen there too,” he told The Wire.And did the five infant orangutans come from the wild, or were they captive-bred?An injured infant orangutan rescued from a trader in Indonesia. Credit: YOSL-OIC.Were they wild or captive-bred?If these animals came from the wild, it means their mothers were killed during the process of sourcing the infants, said Uttara Mendiratta, an Indian conservation researcher working on counter-illegal wildlife hunting and trade.“So that’s five individual mothers killed while removing five babies. There would have been other animals that would have been traded in a similar way. So you are looking at a population that is drastically declining due to habitat destruction, and now you’re adding this pressure to it,” she told The Wire.And removing individuals that are at a reproductive age is a problem for many reasons. In the wild, a female orangutan reaches sexual maturity only at the age of eight or ten. On an average, many have their first infants only when they are around 15 years old. They also reproduce very slowly.“A female orangutan reproduces only once every seven to nine years so this means perhaps only three to four babies in their entire life,” Serhadli told The Wire. That’s the slowest reproductive rate of any land mammal.Additionally, infants stay with their mothers for around eight to nine years. “Besides humans, orangutans have the longest maternal relationship between mothers and offspring in animals,” he said.Another possibility is that the infant orangutans rescued in Odisha could have been born in captivity, in a breeding facility, said Mendiratta. But there is no legal captive breeding centre for orangutans, she added.“So even if we say they’re coming from captivity, they’re coming from an illegal facility. Even legal facilities we know can have laundering problems,” she told The Wire.Why should India be concerned?India is now a big destination for illegal exotic pets, experts say.In 2022, locals found kangaroos hopping around in the forests of Jalpaiguri. More recently, conservationists have been particularly worried about the demand for apes in India, particularly gibbons (small-bodied apes), reported Mongabay-India. Per the report, Indian media reported two confiscations of endangered siamang gibbons (Symphalangus syndactylus) from Thailand and Malaysia, and one seizure of agile gibbons (Hylobates agilis) from Malaysia, in 2024 alone.An infant gibbon clutches on to its dead cage-mate. Of the 12 infant gibbons rescued in this operation, nine died. All were destined to India, via Malaysia and Thailand. Credit: YOSL-OIC.In August 2026, Tamil actor Vikram came under the scanner after he posted a video, later deleted, of him playing with his gibbon pet. It was a Lar gibbon (Hylobates lar): a species found only in the forests of Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar, and listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List.International trade of all these species is strictly regulated by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.The recent discovery of infant orangutans in Odisha shows that India has now become a part of the global conservation crisis, said Mendiratta.“We are a part of this now. We are not only the source country. We’re not only a transit country. We are a clear market for illegally traded wildlife. That acknowledgement has come over the years but it’s not there in the public. We don’t see ourselves as consumers of wildlife. But that, I think, needs to change,” she told The Wire. “And I’m hoping this event is really going to make us think about what our role is in the international conservation crisis.”Additionally, the numbers of primates in pet collections are increasing, and confiscations also point to potential breeding centres in India, Louies told The Wire.“The recent incident involving the Tamil actor Vikram is a clear indication and subsequent investigations revealed that there was a holding facility or a captive breeding facility operational in southern India. So this is happening across the country that India is not just becoming a destination but it is also probably upgrading itself into a breeding place for exotic animals,” he said.Another reason India should be concerned is that its legal system has loopholes. The five infant orangutans being found in Odisha’s forests is not an isolated incident, said Sumanth Bindumadhav, director of wildlife protection at Humane World for Animals India.“Our legislative analysis published in June flagged this exact failure: India has no framework restricting private ownership of species for whom captivity is inherently unsuitable – great apes most of all,” he said.Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of YOSL-OIC, with a traumatised infant orangutan rescued from illegal wildlife trade.Why should people care?Indians should care because it is their demand for live exotic pets including gibbons and apes that are driving illegal wildlife trafficking worldwide, experts told The Wire. People in India have a responsibility to ensure that there is no demand for such illegal pets, said Louies:“Law enforcement should be strict on this. But more than authorities, it is the people who have these animals as pets, they are responsible. You can find a hundred ways to smuggle anything into this vast country via a land port or sea port. But if there is no market, there is no trade. People who are asking for these animals as pets are actually creating more crime and more violations which are not good either for the animals or people.”Photographs and videos of celebrities with such exotic and cute animals play a huge role in this demand, said Serhadli. For instance, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi posed with a ring-tailed lemur in Vantara, the Reliance-owned zoological, rescue and rehabilitation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, there were reports of two ring-tailed lemurs being stolen from a zoo in Bangladesh, he pointed out.(Vantara shared this photo on March 9, 2025. On March 23, the Gazipur Safari Park reported that two of its adult ring-tailed lemurs and their offspring were stolen. On September 11 this year, Vantara issued a clarification, saying that Vantara is not an accused in the ongoing investigation on the stolen lemurs, and that it welcomes “scientific verification, including DNA testing” if Indian and Bangladeshi authorities require it.)But such photographs create demand, said Serhadli. “It becomes a status symbol, and people feel the need to replicate it.”“There is a big wealth accumulation in India, and people are trying to replicate the lifestyles that you see in the UAE – people posing with cheetahs, lions, orangutans. And India is replicating exactly the same. If they cannot have a zoo of their own, they just want private collections,” he added.A wounded orangutan female rescued the YOSL-OIC. Credit: YOSL-OIC.But the trail of bodies of animals, including those of cute orangutans, that such demand causes is extremely disturbing, Serhadli said:“We see the impact on the ground … Some rescued animals never recover from the trauma, and spend their whole life in a cage because they are just too traumatised. Or we have orangutans riddled with bullets as they shoot the mother to catch the baby. Sometimes babies are blinded by these air rifle bullets too. We had orangutans with 60 air rifle bullets in them … People don’t get the magnitude of what wildlife trafficking actually is. These are trafficking syndicates which traffic animals, guns, drugs and humans. It’s all linked.”Where are the orangutans now?The five infant orangutans – three females and two males – found in Balasore are currently being housed at the Nandankanan Zoological Park near Bhubaneswar in Odisha. The animals have been quarantined and are under medical supervision. According to a report by the Indian Express, a special team from the Odisha police and one from the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau are investigating links to an animal smuggling racket.Per a report by PTI, Odisha government officials said on Sunday (September 13) that the state has constituted a five-member technical committee to oversee the care of the five baby orangutans.Odisha’s forest minister, meanwhile, wants to retain the infants at the Nandankanan Zoo as they would bring in more footfall and tourists. The Indian Express quoted state forest and environment minister Ganesh Ram Singhkhuntia as saying on September 11 that the Odisha government had written to the Central Zoo Authority on September 9 seeking permission to retain the five orangutans at Nandankanan.Should India return them to their country of origin?“Absolutely.” That’s what both scientists in India who study illegal wildlife trade, and conservationists who study, rescue and rehabilitate great apes in Indonesia say.“This is a no-brainer,” said Mendiratta. “There is no doubt in my mind that these animals should go back and be part of that population that is being re-introduced into the wild. So there’s no justification at all for India to keep these animals at Nandankanan or any other place.”A female orangutan and its infant in the wild in Indonesia. Credit: YOSL-OIC.Though DNA samples will need to confirm this, photographs and videos of the infant orangutans suggest that they are possibly Sumatran orangutans, said Serhadli. So sending the animals to Indonesia would be the right move.“You cannot go wrong with Indonesia. Even if they are Bornean orangutans, all Bornean subspecies are found in Indonesia. Of course, there are two Bornean subspecies that are found in the Malaysian side, but I think Indonesia definitely has well established, internationally recognised rescue and rehabilitation centers,” he told The Wire.It’s important that India send them back to their countries of origin because the animals are critically endangered, said conservationist Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of the YOSL-OIC in Sumatra. If India sends them back, they have a chance to be returned to the wild and contribute to the genetic pool that is increasingly being depleted, he told The Wire.“Orangutans are our natural heritage and we owe them proper rehabilitation and a chance of a life in the wild,” he said.And Indonesia has successfully re-wilded around 400 such rescued orangutans in Sumatra alone, which now live in two different populations in the wild in north Sumatra, said Serhadli. The YOSL-OIC has rescued over 300 orangutans and the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme has rehabilitated and released over 390 into the wild.They have now established two new populations of orangutans this way: one in north Aceh (190 individuals), and one in the province of Jambi (over 200).“This has never been done for any ape species and speaks for the possibilities. These populations will reach minimum viability once you have 250 individuals, so every individual returned counts to ensuring these two new populations become viable and self-sustaining. In a nutshell: these populations stand at around 400 orangutans that have been rehabilitated, released and that are reproducing in the wild. Therefore, there is an immense value in returning these five orangutans and potentially other orangutans held in India.”