ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how emotion features in discourses around orangutan conservation. The author shows that although emotion features prominently in personal accounts of why people became involved in orangutan conservation, decisions based on emotion may be treated with suspicion within the community. However, criticism of emotion tends to reflect a worry about paying insufficient attention to consequences of actions and broader contexts, which can lead people to ignore how caring for an orangutan can compromise orangutan autonomy or fail to help a greater number of individuals. Critics of emotion therefore often advocate for triage, or an effort to spend scarce resources where they will make the biggest difference; their argument is not for less emotion but for more thought. Critics of triage, in turn, highlight that triage shouldn’t be easy, and that conservationists should “stay with the trouble”. The chapter concludes that together these perspectives hold that emotion and rationality must go hand in hand in conservation decision-making.
