Orangutan Orphans
C.S.Ling with 5-month old Ben at the nursery C.S.Ling with 5-month old Ben at the nursery
BY C.S.LING AND Ethan Lim

As the world turns their focus to the causes and effects of climate change, deforestation, mono-culture of oil palm plantation and poaching; one often neglect the immediate victim of this chaos - the orangutan orphans. For many of these innocent young ones, their nightmares begin when they were just a few months old.


Witnessing their mothers murdered right before their own eyes; they were then forced apart from their dead mothers and thrown into cages to be sold in illegal wildlife trade. Within a short span of less than a day, these young orangutan orphans experienced the traumatic turnover in their destiny, where their home and only kin were being robbed away from them by another primitive species, our fellow human kind. Unfortunately, for every orangutan orphans that were eventually saved, many more died as a result of injury from falling to the forest floor when their mother was shot; from contracting contagious diseases from humans; or from succumbing to the poor conditions in which they are often kept following their capture.

On Mother’s Day this May 2011, journey into the jungles of Borneo with C.S Ling and & Ethan Lim. Experience the heart-warming photos and stories of the 612 orphaned orangutans at BOSF Nyaru Menteng, who are finding their way back into the wild again, where they truly belong.