JAKARTA — When scientists made the bombshell announcement in 2017 that the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) was a new species, the apes were immediately put under the global spotlight. With fewer than 800 individuals surviving in a tiny tract of forest in the western part of Indonesia, scientists declared the Tapanuli orangutan as the rarest […]
Tag: Tapanuli orangutan
As Indonesia paints rosy picture for orangutans, scientists ask: Where’s the data?
Dutch biologist Erik Meijaard isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers. In the past 15 years, he’s published some 120 opinion pieces in Indonesian newspapers, many of them critical about the state of conservation in the biodiversity-rich country. But even Meijaard didn’t expect his latest article, which challenged government claims that orangutans in the Southeast Asian nation […]
U.K. conglomerate Jardines ‘caught red-handed’ clearing orangutan habitat in Sumatra
BALI, Indonesia — Satellite imagery has detected deforestation in a gold mining concession in Indonesia that overlaps with the habitat of the most threatened great ape in the world. U.S.-based environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth said it had detected 13 hectares (32 acres) of forest loss within the Martabe gold mining concession in North Sumatra […]
Historical data point to ‘imminent extinction’ of Tapanuli orangutan
JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had it that the creatures, called orang pendek, or “short people,” by the locals, disappeared from the forest in the 1970s. Today, Onrizal is a forestry […]