Those of you who remember the comedian, actor, singer and pianist Jimmy Durante probably also remember his big nose. He often joked about it. If you can imagine his nose hanging a few inches farther down his face to cover his mouth, you will have an idea of what proboscis monkeys look like.
The monkeys’ prominent noses can be up to seven inches long. The bigger the nose, the bigger the monkey, and female monkeys are attracted to those long-nosed males. Proboscis monkeys have been in decline but are starting to make a comeback, thanks to native trees.
The proboscis monkey is found only in Borneo, the largest island of Asia that covers 288,869 square miles. Borneo is divided among three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
The monkeys live in the forests along Borneo’s inland waterways and coastal mangroves, wrote Alex Fox in the April/May 2026 Smithsonian Magazine article, “A Most Unusual Monkey.” They eat young leaves and unripe fruit. They have partially webbed fingers and toes that help them swim across rivers. They always come back at night to their homes.
Proboscis monkeys have faced a crisis for quite some time. Humans have destroyed much of the waterfront forests where they live. Since 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified the monkey as endangered. Regional estimates based on scant data indicate there are about 20,000-25,000 monkeys today. Their population has declined more than 70 percent over about four decades.
Agriculture and logging have reduced the natural forest about 80 percent in Sabah, a state in Malaysia. Not only has much of the monkeys’ habitat been destroyed, but in some areas of Indonesia, people hunt proboscis monkeys for food and traditional medicine.
Malaysia has taken note of the problem. Hutan, a Malaysian conservation organization, is working to heal the landscape. Since 2008, Hutan has planted more than 246,000 native trees along riverbanks in government-protected areas. It also has planted them on private land that the organization and its partners have secured. Hutan also spends time encouraging farmers to plant native trees on their land.
The organization has seen success. An oil palm plantation added native trees to its riverside land with the help of Hutan. A few years later proboscis monkeys began returning to the area.
Restoring degraded forests is making a difference. The proboscis monkeys, with their noses even longer than Jimmy Durante’s, are starting to make a comeback thanks to caring humans who plant native trees.
