June, who is a Sarawakian, was responding to plantation industries and commodities minister Zuraida Kamaruddin’s comments at the Malaysian Palm Oil Council’s 2022 seminar and dialogue recently that orangutans kill men on sight.

The minister had said there were still many orangutans in the wild, in response to claims that the palm oil industry was killing the primates.

The minister had also said that the wildlife department (Perhilitan) did not simply kill orangutans, tigers and lions, and had a policy of “making the animals faint” before taking them to the zoo.

June, who has experience in handling captive orangutans that have been displaced because of plantation, logging and other human activities, said in her tweet that Perhilitan had no jurisdiction in Sabah and Sarawak, and their powers were limited in Peninsular Malaysia.

“The orangutans that people fear most are the ones that have had contact with men. Sadly, they are often locked up.”

“Truly, wild orangutans that are left alone avoid humans as much as they can,” she said.

June said the indigenous communities that shared their place with orangutans had their own complex inter-species relationships with the primates, but none had told her, “If we don’t kill them first, they will kill us.”

“I imagine those with such views are the ones who have intruded onto orangutans and indigenous territories without consent.

“Promoting the idea that primates are dangerous to humans exposes our own ignorance of nature,” she said.

June said Malaysians had so much to learn from native communities who had coexisted with animals for centuries before widespread deforestation and industrialisation drastically changed their landscape and population.

“Perhaps alongside palm oil production being taught in schools, we can also teach political ecology, globalisation, political economy, our native cultures, science, and languages from a non-anthropology point of view to students so they can be better equipped to handle the future,” she said.