Killing of the orangutans
– The orangutans are slow and heavy therefore they are easy targets. They are also killed because they invade villages homes and farms, but this is because they can’t find any food in the rainforests. The villagers probably use their availablility heuristic, and kill them seeing that they are ‘dangerous’ since they raid farms.

Illegal Pet trade
– Since the mothers are very protective of their young, poachers kill the mothers in order to get the baby to sell it for illegal pet trade. When they manage to recover the young who are captured as pets and brought to Camp Leakey, they need a lot of care. This is because young orangutans spend a lot of their time with their mother, for about 10-15 years. This could probably be a result of the tragedy of the commons because if the person doesn’t capture the young orangutan, someone else will.

Intensive Logging
– The Indonesian forests are being cleared at an alarming rate. It’s lost about 80% of its original rainforest (their size makes up Germany and the Netherlands combined) and had the highest rate of deforestation in the world during 2008-2009. Therefore she has also made it a point to protect the rainforests. This could also probably be a result of the tragedy of the commons as a lot of organizations want to set up palm oil plantations.

Lack of exposure
– As compared to Jane Goodall, she is not as well known. She is also protecting a species that is critically nearing extinction. Not much attention has been given to her. However, with the film Born to be Wild which was released last year, it has helped her and Camp Leakey gain a little more attention in the press.

Bigger role, Bigger Responsibility
– With all these things happening at such a fast rate she has to fufill much more in a much shorter period of time.