From co-presence to zoning: Dayak Iban–orangutan relations and everyday territorialization in West Kalimantan

This study examines how overlapping territorial regimes, specifically state conservation zoning, industrial plantation frontiers, and customary tenure, generate divergent socio-ecological pathways and human–orangutan relations in two Dayak Iban communities in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Utilizing a retroductive research design grounded in comparative ethnographic fieldwork and environmental history, the analysis traces how national forest classifications and corporate expansions intersect with everyday forest practices. Despite a shared Iban identity and comparable ecologies, the two landscapes have diverged significantly, materializing as contrasting spatial arrangements, shifting relations with state authority, and uneven ecocultural continuity. This study positions human–orangutan dynamics as a vital empirical entry point to show how uniform state frameworks fracture on the ground. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that the uneven impacts of green frontiers are experienced not merely as administrative friction, but as a deeply shared, multispecies experience of environmental precarity, thereby offering a diagnostic framework for reimagining conservation futures.