The Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine (OCCQ) in Borneo is a temporary home to hundreds of young orphaned orangutans building up the skills and confidence they need to be released back into the wild. But the OCCQ is home to a small handful of fully-grown adult male orangutans as well. One of these big guys is Montana, a strikingly benevolent and quick-witted orangutan with a painful past and a complicated future. Adult male orangutans are [...]

I was in the second grade when I learned that all of our fellow great apes were endangered, and I could still point out the shelf in my elementary school library where I pored over books about orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. I remember seeing photos and watching nature films about Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas and her famous research station, Camp Leakey, established deep in the tropical forest of Borneo in 1971. As a child [...]

A tangible sense of excitement sets in at the Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine (OCCQ) in the days leading up to orangutans being permanently released back into the wild. OCCQ staff start cleaning and preparing transport cages, veterinarians do the final medical check-ups on the orangutans slated to be released, and caregivers spend some last tender moments with the orangutans they have watched grow up over the years. Surely the orangutans can sense the buzz [...]