I sat down with Leif Cocks, often called The Orangutan Whisperer. Leif is a conservationist, author, and founder of several major wildlife initiatives including The Orangutan Project, The International Elephant Project, The International Tiger Project, and Forest for People. With over 30 years of experience working with orangutans, Leif has helped raise more than $25 million toward their conservation, saving countless individuals and preserving critical rainforest habitat.
🎧 Click here to Listen to the full episode of Wildlife Quests for the complete conversation with Leif Cocks and hear first hand how a life spent among orangutans has shaped one of the most passionate voices in wildlife conservation today.
🧭 Leif’s Path to Conservation
Leif’s journey began far from the jungle in the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong. Despite growing up surrounded by concrete, his love for animals and nature was innate. After moving to Australia and completing university, he took a job at a zoo, becoming the first zookeeper there with a university degree. When the role of orangutan keeper opened up, he embraced it untrained, unafraid, and open to genuine connection with the animals.
This early hands on experience, sharing space and even lunch with the orangutans, helped Leif understand their individuality and intelligence. It was this deep bond and recognition of their personhood that led him to conclude that orangutans do not belong in captivity, and thus, The Orangutan Project was born.
🌳 What is The Orangutan Project?
Founded by Leif, The Orangutan Project is a conservation organization focused on saving orangutans through habitat protection, rescue operations, and rehabilitation. The charity buys and leases rainforest land to ensure viable ecosystems remain intactemphasizing that fragmented or mountainous forests are not enough to sustain orangutans and other lowland species.
Some highlights of their work include:
• Rescue missions to save orphaned or displaced orangutans from deforested or mining threatened areas.
• Rehabilitation centers that teach rescued orangutans the survival skills they would have learned from their mothers referred to as “Orangutan School.”
• Rewilding and Sanctuary programs that reintroduce or house orangutans in large, natural enclosures where they can live with dignity and even breed.
Leif and his team also support translocation and protection efforts across Sumatra and Borneo, piecing together the last critical ecosystems to prevent extinction.
Meet the Orangutans: Three Species, One Crisis
Leif explains that there are three species of orangutans:
• Bornean (Pongo pygmaeus)
• Sumatran (Pongo abelii)
• Tapanuli (Pongo tapanuliensis) – a newly identified species only discovered in 2017.
Each species is uniquely adapted to its environment. For example, Sumatran orangutans evolved larger brains and stronger cultural behaviours to locate highenergy fruit in richer volcanic soil, while Bornean orangutans have larger digestive systems and rely more on leaves due to poorer soil quality.
The Tapanuli orangutan, tragically, has a population of only 600–800 individuals and is already critically endangered due to habitat destruction from mining and dam projects. Their isolation in rugged, untouched terrain helped preserve them until recently but now, that same inaccessibility makes conservation efforts a race against time.
🧠 Intelligence, Culture & Conservation
Orangutans are highly intelligent, culturally complex, and incredibly slow breeding females reproduce only once every 7–9 years. This means that even low levels of poaching or habitat disruption can devastate populations.
Leif’s insight underscores how orangutans are not just animals they are individuals with personalities, emotions, and cultural knowledge, much of which is passed down from mothers to offspring. Conserving them is not just about numbers it’s about preserving communities, culture, and the wild spaces they depend on.
Click to Listen Now ↓
itsawildlife.blog 
Leave a comment