MATSUYAMA, April 4 -- A zoo in western Japan aims to breed endangered orangutans by pairing a male at the zoo with a female from an Indonesian zoo under a rare wildlife conservation agreement, Kyodo News reported. 

Hayato, a 15-year-old male Bornean orangutan at Tobe Zoological Park of Ehime Prefecture, has reached breeding age, but the zoo has struggled to find him a partner as the species is limited in Japan and listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

A turning point came in 2018, when Taman Safari Indonesia proposed launching a joint orangutan conservation project with the prefecture-run zoo, a facility that had previously succeeded in breeding Sumatran orangutans.

Ehime...