topic: Great Apes

topic: Great Apes

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Hold my ointment: Wild orangutan observed healing wound with medicinal plant
- Researchers observed a wild orangutan in Sumatra treating a facial wound with a plant known for its healing properties, marking the first documented case of such behavior in a wild animal.
- The adult male Sumatran orangutan was observed chewing on the plant Fibraurea tinctoria, which has pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory effects, and rubbing the resultant ointment on the wound, which later healed without infection.
- This finding supports the idea that orangutans might self-medicate, demonstrating their cognitive abilities and drawing parallels to human practices.
- Conservationists have welcomed the finding, highlighting its significance for understanding forest biodiversity and the urgency of protecting orangutan habitat amid declining populations and persistent threats.

Indonesian company defies order, still clearing peatlands in orangutan habitat
- Indonesian Pulpwood producer PT Mayawana Persada is continuing to clear peatlands on critical Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) habitat, despite a government order to stop clearing.
- An NGO coalition analysis found that 30,296 hectares (74,900 acres) of peatland, including 15,560 hectares (38,400 acres) of protected lands, had been converted as of March; 15,643 hectares (38,700 acres) of known Bornean orangutan habitat were cleared between 2016 and 2022.
- Conservationists are calling on the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to revoke the company’s permits.

Indonesian capital project finally gets guidelines to avoid harm to biodiversity
- Beset by criticism over its environmental and social impacts, the controversial project of building Indonesia’s new capital city in the Bornean jungle has finally come out with guidelines for biodiversity management.
- The country’s president has hailed the Nusantara project as a “green forest city,” but just 16% of its total area is currently intact rainforest.
- The new biodiversity master plan outlines a four-point mitigation policy of avoiding harm, minimizing any inevitable impacts, restoring damaged landscapes, and compensating for residual impacts.
- The master plan considered input from experts, but several didn’t make it into the final document, including a call for the mitigation policy to extend to a wider area beyond the Nusantara site.

Bonobos, the ‘hippy apes’, may not be as peaceful as once thought
- Bonobos have a reputation of being the hippies of the ape world, due to their propensity to “make love, not war.”
- But a new study reveals that bonobos, found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo, may not be as peaceful as once thought.
- Researchers discovered aggressive acts between bonobos from the same group exceeded those recorded among chimpanzees, and that aggressive male bonobos were more successful in mating.
- The study provides a more nuanced analysis of these endangered apes, but also highlights the need to protect them from hunting and habitat loss.

Report links pulpwood estate clearing Bornean orangutan habitat to RGE Group
- NGOs have accused PT Mayawana Persada, a company with a massive pulpwood concession in Indonesian Borneo, of extensive deforestation that threatens both Indigenous lands and orangutan habitat.
- In a recent report, the NGOs also highlighted links that they say tie the company to Singapore-based paper and palm oil conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle (RGE).
- RGE has denied any affiliation with Mayawana Persada, despite findings of shared key personnel, operational management connections, and supply chain links.
- The report also suggests the Mayawana Persada plantation is gearing up to supply pulpwood in time for a massive production boost by RGE, which is expanding its flagship mill in Sumatra and building a new mill in Borneo.

Palm oil deforestation persists in Indonesia’s Leuser amid new mills, plantations
- Deforestation for palm oil persists in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, including inside a national park that’s supposed to be off-limits to plantation activity, a new investigation has found.
- The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) characterizes the current deforestation trend as a “death by a thousand cuts,” with a large number of small operators hacking away at the ecosystem, in contrast to past deforestation carried out by a small number of large concession holders.
- RAN’s investigation also identified two new palm oil processing mills near the deforesting concessions, indicating that the presence of the mills, which need a constant supply of palm fruit, may be a driver of the ongoing deforestation.
- There’s a high risk that mills in the area may ultimately be supplying deforestation-linked palm oil to major global consumer products companies, including those with stated no-deforestation policies.

Norway pension fund breaks with U.K. conglomerate Jardines over endangered orangutan habitat
- Norway’s state pension fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has cut ties with Jardine Matheson (Jardines) due to concerns that the conglomerate’s gold mining activities in Indonesia could damage the only known habitat of the world’s most threatened great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis).
- The fund joins 29 financiers that have excluded Jardines and/or its subsidiaries from financing due to climate and environmental concerns, according to data from the Financial Exclusions Tracker.
- The Tapanuli orangutan was only first described in 2017, and its estimated population numbers fewer than 800 that survive in a tiny tract of forest; 95% of the ape’s historical habitat has been lost to hunting, conflict killing and agriculture.
- The Martabe mining concession in northern Sumatra lies in the portion of the orangutan’s habitat, the Batang Toru forest, with the largest orangutan population, where the probability of the species’ long-term survival is highest; the fund worried that further expansion of the mine would increase threats to the ape.

Indonesian gold mine expanding in ‘wrong direction’ into orangutan habitat
- A gold mine in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan is expanding, prompting alarm from activists and conservationists.
- The Martabe mine on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, run by a company associated with the U.K.’s Jardine Matheson Holdings, already cleared 100 hectares (about 250 acres) of forest from 2016 to 2020, and looks set to clear another 100 hectares.
- Advocacy group Mighty Earth says the expansion will impact an area recently established to help protect the orangutan and other threatened species.
- Jardines says an independent forestry and sustainability assessment concluded that the long-term impact of the planned exploration and development work was minimal.

No joking: Great apes can be silly and playfully tease each other, finds study
- Cracking a good joke is no laughing matter, but the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor have so far been studied mostly in humans, with our great ape cousins going largely overlooked.
- Now, a new study reports playful teasing behavior — a precursor to joking — in small groups of chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.
- The study is the first to define playful teasing as a distinct behavior separate from play in great apes and describe its various forms.
- The findings suggest that the cognitive requirements for joking and playful teasing evolved at least 13 million years ago in ancestors common to humans and great apes.

Male dominance isn’t the default in primate societies, new study shows
- A recent study challenges the notion that it’s a man’s world when it comes to primate social groups.
- The study found that while a majority of species (58%) exhibited male-biased power structures, female- or co-dominant structures were identified in every major primate group.
- The pattern held true for apes as well; all five gibbon species studied were classified as non-male-dominant, as were bonobos among the great apes.
- Experts say that long-held beliefs in male power as the default among primates could have developed due to chance (the earliest studied primate species happen to have male-dominant structures), or due to “who’s been doing the research and publishing.”

Bees bring honey and hope to a forest reserve in Nigeria
- Nigeria’s Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve boasts more plant species than any other montane forest in Nigeria.
- The reserve is also home to a small population of endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- However, human pressures have resulted in deforestation of portions of Ngel Nyaki.
- An initiative hopes to safeguard and rehabilitate Ngel Nyaki’s habitat by training community members in beekeeping.

Bid to mitigate gold mine’s impact on orangutans hit by stonewalling, data secrecy
- An international conservation task force says a gold mine operator in Indonesia resisted its efforts to carry out an independent review of the project’s impact on Tapanuli orangutans, the world’s most threatened great ape species.
- The ARRC Task Force, which had been engaged by the Martabe gold mine in early 2022 to advise on minimizing its impacts on the critically endangered species, said the task force was expected to carry out a mere “tick box exercise.”
- U.K. conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., which ultimately owns the mine, said the reason the engagement fell through was Indonesian legal restrictions on data sharing, which meant the ARRC couldn’t access the government-held data it needed.
- Part of the Martabe concession overlaps onto the Batang Toru Forest, the only home of the Tapanuli orangutan; advocacy group Mighty Earth says most of the deforestation detected recently in the concession occurred in orangutan habitat and carbon-rich landscapes.

A rush for ‘green’ iron is on in Guinea. Will chimpanzees be a casualty?
- In December, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans to sink $6.2 billion into a long-delayed iron ore mine in Guinea’s Simandou mountain range.
- Simandou contains the largest undeveloped high-grade iron deposits on earth, certain to be in high demand due to their suitability for low-emissions steel production.
- In the nearby Nimba mountains, another major iron deposit is moving closer to production, as a World Bank-backed project run by a subsidiary of HPX moves forward with feasibility studies.
- Both the Simandou and Nimba mountain ranges are home to critically endangered western chimpanzees, and conservationists say that mining operations there could pose a major threat to them.

Bonobos and chimps recall friends and family even after years apart: Study
- An experiment with bonobos and chimpanzees suggests the great apes remember their friends and family even after years apart.
- Louise, a bonobo who participated in the study, recognized a sister she had last seen 26 years ago, in what is now evidence of the “longest-lasting nonhuman social memory” on the scientific record.
- Laura Simone Lewis and her colleagues designed an experiment to track eye movement (used as an indicator of recognition) when the animals were faced with two photos side by side — one of a former group mate and the other of a stranger from their species.
- The team found that the kind of relationship shared by two individuals also influences recognition; if they had a more positive relationship as group mates, the bonobo or chimp directed more attention to that individual.

Newly described tree species from Sumatra could be vital for threatened orangutans
- A new species of stone oak has been described from the forests of northern Sumatra, the first of its kind found on the island in more than 10 years.
- The two lone trees are located in the remote Batang Toru forest, the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, which was itself only described in 2017.
- The new stone oak’s acorns seem to be an important part of the orangutans’ diet, but ongoing habitat destruction means this tree is also likely to be critically endangered.
- Urgent conservation action is needed to save the remaining Batang Toru forest and establish cultivated populations of the rare oak to prevent its extinction, researchers say.

Killings of Bornean orangutans could lead to their extinction
- Human actions have led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Bornean orangutans since 1999, mainly for crop protection, bushmeat or the illegal wildlife trade.
- For the first time in 15 years, researchers surveyed residents of Kalimantan, the Indonesian section of Borneo, to find out why people kill the great apes and whether conservation projects help protect them.
- Researchers found that killings seriously threaten orangutan numbers, and that conservation projects have not yet helped.

Are flame retardants about to burn a hole in biodiversity? (commentary)
- Researchers recently mapped more than 150 species of wild animals across every continent contaminated with flame retardant chemicals.
- These chemicals are added to furniture, electronics and vehicles but routinely escape such products and are found in the blood of wildlife species such as baboons, chimpanzees, and red colobus monkeys with unknown effects, but in humans these exposures are associated with lower IQs, reduced fertility, and an elevated risk of cancer.
- “Even though we lack data on flame retardants in wildlife from most tropical areas with high levels of biodiversity, the findings from Uganda strongly suggest that wildlife in other tropical ecosystems are probably affected as well,” a new op-ed states in arguing for a rapid reduction in their use.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Burn now, pay later: Fines trickle in from Indonesia’s crackdown on forest fires
- Ten years since a landmark lawsuit over forest fires, the palm oil company at the center of the case has finally begun paying its $23 million fine in installments.
- The case against PT Kallista Alam (KA) was supposed to set an example for how the government is cracking down on companies that allow burning in their concessions, but has instead highlighted the difficulty of collecting on the fines.
- KA has paid just $3.6 million of its total fine, and despite a 2021 regulation barring fine payments in installments, the company has been allowed to stagger its payments over time.
- The company is one of 22 sued by the government since 2013 for fires; 14 of these have been found liable and ordered to pay a combined 5.6 trillion rupiah ($353 million), but only one has paid in full.

Gorilla permit fraud dents community-led conservation efforts in Uganda
- Foreign tourists pay $600-$700 per person for gorilla-tracking permits issued by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, which allow them to track and spend an hour with human-habituated mountain gorilla families.
- A recent audit at the UWA showed that some corrupt officials were issuing fake permits, diverting revenue away from the agency and impacting its conservation work, including project funding for communities at the frontline of gorilla conservation.
- In response, the agency suspended 14 staff members suspected of fraud, initiated a thorough probe, and rolled out a new system for issuing permits and collecting revenue.
- Communities living near the gorilla parks, many of whom have faced restrictions on traditional rights to the forests as a result of their protected status, say they’re aware of the scandal and that it’s only the latest in their litany of grievances against the UWA.

Deforestation surges in hotspot of critically endangered Bornean orangutans
- Deforestation within a pulpwood concession that overlaps with key orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo has escalated in recent months.
- Concession holder PT Mayawana Persada cleared 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) of forest between January and August, or 40 times the size of New York’s Central Park, of which 13,000 hectares (32,100 acres) were areas identified as orangutan habitat.
- In July alone, the company cleared 4,970 hectares (12,300 acres), the highest monthly deforestation figure recorded.

Deforestation for palm oil continues in Indonesia’s ‘orangutan capital’
- Carbon-rich peatlands continue to be cleared and drained in an Indonesian protected wildlife reserve known as the “orangutan capital of the world,” with 26 kilometers (16 miles) of new canals dug so far in 2023, up from 9 km (5.6 mi) in 2022, according to an investigation by the advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
- While new plantations appeared to have not been established yet along the new canal channels, there is a mosaic of illegal oil palm around the locations of the new canal, indicating a future development of palm oil.
- As new canals continue to be dug, deforestation has also picked up, reaching 372 hectares (919 acres) in the first six months of 2023, a 57% increase from the same period in 2022.
- RAN has called on global brands like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever to address the development of new canals and illegal plantations as their supply chains are tainted with illegal palm oil from the wildlife reserve.

World’s top sovereign fund latest to cut ties with dam in orangutan habitat
- The Norwegian state pension fund has recommended excluding a major Chinese hydropower developer from further investment, due to its association with a dam in Indonesia that threatens the world’s rarest great ape.
- The dam is being built by a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned multinational Power Construction Corporation of China Ltd. (PowerChina) in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, a species with a total population of less than 800.
- The Norwegian pension fund’s ethics council launched an investigation into the project and concluded that it will “have a destructive and permanent impact on the environment, which will pose a serious threat to the survival of this orangutan species as well as other critically endangered species.”
- Environmentalists say Norway’s recommendation further reinforces the risks the dam project poses on the orangutan and should prompt the project’s main backers, the Chinese and Indonesian governments, to abandon the project.

Migrating orangutan males imitate locals to learn about food: Study
- Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of a local individual in an effort to survive and find a future home range, a new study says.
- The researchers have dubbed the behavior learning skill as “peering” and describe it as when migrant male orangutans intensively observe over a period of time a certain local they have chosen as a role model.
- The scientists analyzed data of hundreds of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans in research stations in Aceh and Central Kalimantan.
- Indonesia is home to the world’s three orangutan species: Sumatran, Tapanuli (P. tapanuliensis) and Bornean orangutans.

Orangutan ‘beatboxing’ offers clues about human language, study says
- Researchers have discovered that orangutans possess vocal abilities similar to beatboxing, where they can produce two different sounds simultaneously.
- The study suggests that these vocal abilities in orangutans may have existed in ancient, extinct relatives of humans and could have influenced the development of human speech.
- The vocal control and coordination abilities of wild great apes, including orangutans, have been underestimated compared to the focus on vocal abilities in birds.
- Further research is needed to understand how orangutans develop their beatboxing-like calls and to explore the connections between bird vocalizations, great ape vocalizations, and human speech.

Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say
- Great apes are on track to lose 94% of their range to climate change by 2050 if humans do nothing to address the problem, according to research.
- In the great apes stronghold of the Congo Basin, national interests in natural resource exploitation, a lack of security in areas like the Albertine Rift, hunting, and the illegal wildlife trade all greatly impact populations of bonobos and mountain gorillas.
- In this episode of Mongabay Explores, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Kirsty Graham, Terese Hart, and Sally Coxe speak with Mongabay about the threats to bonobos and mountain gorillas, the lessons learned from decades of conservation efforts, the importance of great apes for the protection of Congo Basin rainforest, and ways forward for conservation as well as livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities.

Why did the orangutan cross the toll road to Indonesia’s new capital city?
- The sighting of a Bornean orangutan crossing the sight of an under-construction toll road to Indonesia’s new capital city has renewed questions about the government’s claims about how “green” the $32 billion project really is.
- It’s not the first wildlife sighting in the construction area; there have already been five instances of clouded leopards seen in the area.
- Activists say these sightings indicate that the development of the new capital and its supporting infrastructure is being carried out without proper planning and thus will threaten the region’s ecosystem and wildlife.
- The toll road project has cleared hundreds of hectares of forests that serve as a buffer zone to a protected forest area that’s a habitat for threatened species such as orangutans, sun bears, proboscis monkeys and Irrawaddy dolphins.

Ground-nesting chimps hold lessons for conservation — and for human evolution
- Eastern chimpanzees in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo frequently build nests and sleep overnight on the ground even in areas where predators are present, a recent study finds.
- The ability of these relatively small-bodied apes to sleep on the ground without fire or fortifications suggests that other hominids, including early humans, could have moved from the safety of trees earlier than thought.
- The study also found that chimpanzees were not deterred from ground nesting when they shared space with humans — as long as those humans were not hunting.
- This, the researchers say, suggests chimpanzee conservation and human use of forests can coexist.

Camera trap images of rare gorillas with infants bring hope in DRC
- Camera traps in the Tayna Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo have recorded two mother-infant pairs of eastern lowland gorillas, confirming the presence of healthy family groups in one of their last strongholds.
- This subspecies is critically endangered, with only 6,800 individuals left in the world, and is threatened by hunting, deforestation and mining activities
- Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education (GRACE) operates the world’s only sanctuary for rescued eastern lowland gorillas, and employs local communities in a key role in monitoring efforts in Tayna.

World’s newest great ape faces habitat loss, multiple threats: Will it survive?
- Scientists designated the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) as a new species in 2017, and it was immediately noted as being the rarest and most threatened great ape with fewer than 800 individuals in western Indonesia.
- The IUCN estimated the apes’ population fell by 83% in recent decades, and the species continues to face grave threats due to habitat loss, a gold mine, a hydroelectric plant and the expansion of croplands.
- While some conservation efforts offer hope, researchers say a coordinated plan is needed to ensure the species survives.

VIDEO | Fight for survival: The battle to save the last Tapanuli orangutans
- The Tapanuli orangutan was described in 2017 as a new great ape species, and with a population of less than 800, is the most endangered great ape on the planet.
- Its habitat has been drastically reduced by deforestation driven by mining, agriculture and logging.
- A Chinese-backed hydropower dam project, under construction since 2015, is cutting across the forests where the orangutans live, increasing their risk of extinction.
- People living in surrounding areas have opposed the dam project over fears of losing their homes and livelihoods, but have faced attempts to silence their resistance.

Guinea’s crab-fishing chimps are in good health, study shows, but threats loom
- An international team has used genetic censusing — analyzing DNA from fecal samples — to work out the size of a population of critically endangered chimpanzees in Guinea.
- At least 136 adult chimpanzees were identified living in four communities on the western flanks of Guinea’s Nimba Mountains, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Iron ore mining is planned in a northern section of the mountains, in an area the chimpanzees use to disperse between their separate communities.
- The scientists warn that human activities that hinder or restrict chimpanzee movements or territories can trigger deadly battles between rival communities of the apes and compromise their genetic diversity.

Palm oil deforestation hits record high in Sumatra’s ‘orangutan capital’
- Deforestation in a protected wildlife reserve known as the “orangutan capital of the world” hit a record high in 2022, according to various analyses.
- The forest loss was driven by clearing for oil palm plantations by well-connected local elites, rather than smallholders, according to advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
- RAN’s investigation found that palm oil from these illegal plantations had wound up in the global supply chains of major brands like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever, among others.

DRC’s endangered bonobos face another threat to their survival: malaria
- Along with humans, great apes like gorillas and chimpanzees are known to get infected with malaria, but evidence about the parasite’s effects on bonobos has been scant.
- A recent study that analyzed the feces of bonobo across the species’ range found that one bonobo population showed evidence of both malaria infection and a genetic variation that would likely protect them against severe disease.
- This genetic variation was less common in other populations, suggesting that other bonobo groups could be in trouble if climate change brings malaria-carrying mosquitoes into their habitats.

Orangutan death in Sumatra points to human-wildlife conflict, illegal trade
- The case of an orangutan that died shortly after its capture by farmers in northern Sumatra has highlighted the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and possibly even the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia.
- The coffee farmers who caught the adult male orangutan on Jan. 20 denied ever hitting it, but a post-mortem showed a backbone fracture, internal bleeding, and other indications of blunt force trauma.
- Watchdogs say it’s possible illegal wildlife traders may have tried to take the orangutan from the farmers, with such traders known to frequent farms during harvest season in search of the apes that are drawn there for food.
- Conservationists say the case is a setback in their efforts to raise awareness about the need to protect critically endangered orangutans.

In Sumatra, increased orangutan sightings point to growing threats to the apes
- Villagers in the Batang Toru forest in northern Sumatra say orangutan sightings in their farms and settlements have increased recently.
- They attribute this to the animals being driven out of their forest habitat by ongoing construction of a hydropower plant and dam.
- The construction activity puts added pressure on the already critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, which numbers fewer than 800 individuals scattered in populations that could be cut off from each other by the project.
- Villagers say it’s important to preserve the animals, as they’re a key seed disperser for the fruit trees that farmers here depend on.

Chimpanzee nut cracking leaves telltale marks on stones, providing clues to human evolution
- Groups of chimpanzees in West Africa use stone tools in distinctly different ways to crack open nuts.
- Researchers used 3D scans to trace wear patterns on the tools, called “hammerstones” and “anvils.”
- The different tool uses may help archaeologists identify signs of early stone tool technology in human ancestors more than 3 million years ago.

Fears for academic freedom as Indonesia doubles down on scientists’ ban
- Indonesian academics continue to question the government’s justification for banning five foreign scientists who called out the official narrative that the country’s orangutan populations are increasing.
- The initial ban made nebulous accusations that the scientists had “negative intentions” that could “discredit” the government, but the environment ministry now claims they broke the law — without specifying how.
- Indonesian scientists campaigning for academic freedom say the government’s move is a form of anti-science policy and power control over the production of knowledge.
- The environment ministry has refused to engage with either the foreign scientists or the academic freedom caucus, with researchers saying this is part of a larger trend of independent science being constrained.

What can Half or Whole Earth conservation strategies do for orangutans?
- In a recent study, a team of researchers attempted to predict how the application of two global conservation ideas, Half-Earth and Whole Earth, would impact orangutan conservation on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia.
- Numbers of all three species of orangutans continue to drop due to habitat loss and killing by humans, despite an estimated $1 billion spent on conservation efforts in the past two decades.
- The researchers surveyed orangutan experts about their thoughts on the application of the two ideas on Borneo; the resulting analysis predicts continued declines for Bornean orangutans under both Half-Earth and Whole Earth paradigms, though they report that the species would fare better under Half-Earth.
- Proponents of the Whole Earth paradigm argue that the authors of the study misinterpreted some of the idea’s central tenets, however.

Indonesia’s orangutans declining amid ‘lax’ and ‘laissez-faire’ law enforcement
- The widespread failure by Indonesian law enforcers to crack down on crimes against orangutans is what’s allowing them to be killed at persistently high rates, a new study suggests.
- It characterizes as “remarkably lax” and “laissez-faire” the law enforcement approach when applied to crimes against orangutans as compared to the country’s other iconic wildlife species, such as tigers.
- Killing was the most prevalent crime against orangutans, the study found when analyzing 2,229 reports from 2007-2019, followed by capture, possession or sale of infants, harm or capture of wild adult orangutans due to conflicts, and attempted poaching not resulting in death.
- The study authors call for stronger deterrence and law enforcement rather than relying heavily on rescue, release and translocation strategies that don’t solve the core crisis of net loss of wild orangutans.

Mountain gorilla reproduction slows with female transfers, study shows
- Successful conservation interventions have helped mountain gorilla populations recover from 620 in 1989 to more than 1,000 today.
- However, mountain gorilla habitat is not expanding, and a growing body of research indicates that increasing density comes with a price: More groups sharing territory leads to more frequent intergroup violence.
- A new study finds that when intergroup contact increases, so do transfers of females between groups, leading to delayed reproduction.
- The study also emphasizes that multiple factors, such as delayed reproduction and increased mortality, cascade to create a slowdown in population growth.

Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- A tunnel collapse, the second this year, at the site of a planned hydroelectric dam in Sumatra has killed another Chinese construction worker.
- The latest incident brings the death toll at the project site to 17 in the space of less than two years.
- The police have declared the death to be accidental, but the string of incidents has raised concerns over the safety of the project, which is already controversial because it threatens to fragment the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.

Severe malaria cases in rescued orangutans raises concerns for wild populations
- Researchers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, sampled orangutans and found a high prevalence of malaria.
- In some cases, malaria resulted in severe illness among the great apes, causing concern about the conservation implications for the animals.
- On the plus side, all of the orangutans inflicted with severe illness responded well to treatment and recovered.
- Some experts says these findings underline the need for a precautionary principle when translocating or reintroducing orangutans that test positive for malaria.

Easygoing bonobos accepting of outsiders, study says
- Bonobos are well known for their peaceable relations within family groups, but there’s less scientific consensus about how much tolerance they extend to individuals outside of their core groups.
- A recent study set out to examine this question by observing members of habituated bonobo communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and comparing their behavior to observations of chimpanzee groups in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
- The researchers found that, compared to chimpanzees, bonobos maintain strong and distinct core groups, but also exhibit frequent and peaceable between-group interactions.
- The findings give conservationists a better understanding of bonobo social behavior, which in turn can inform conservation actions.

Trafficked: Kidnapped chimps, jailed rhino horn traffickers, and seized donkey parts
- Armed intruders who kidnapped three young chimpanzees from a sanctuary in the DRC have threatened to kill them unless a ransom is paid for the apes’ return.
- Calls for renewed focus on organized crime in wildlife trafficking, as specialized courts in Uganda and the DRC are delivering convictions for wildlife crimes that in the past would likely have gone unpunished.
- A seizure in Nigeria has sounded the latest alarm over growing exports of donkey parts for traditional Chinese medicine.
- Trafficked is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the illegal wildlife trade in Africa.

‘Cursed’ dam project in orangutan habitat claims 16th life in less than 2 years
- A tunnel collapse at the site of a planned hydroelectric dam in Sumatra has killed a Chinese construction worker, bringing the death toll at the project site to 16 in the space of less than two years.
- The project is already hugely controversial because it sits in the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a critically endangered species that scientists warn will be pushed further toward extinction if their habitat is fragmented by the dam.
- Opponents of the Chinese-backed project have long argued that the site’s topography and location near a fault line make it “wholly unsuitable” for a large-scale infrastructure project, and that the developers should abandon it.

Snares: Low-tech, low-profile killers of rare wildlife the world over
- Snares are simple, low-tech, noose-like traps that can be made from cheap and easily accessible materials such as wire, rope or brake cables. Easy to set, a single person can place thousands, with one report warning that snares “are a terrestrial equivalent to the drift nets that have devastated marine and freshwater biodiversity.”
- Used throughout the tropics, one estimate says 12 million snares are present in protected areas of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, with the number likely far greater across the wider Southeast Asian region. Snaring is also common in Africa.
- While many hunters target smaller game to eat or sell, snares are indiscriminate, and often maim or kill non-targeted animals such as elephants, lions and giraffes, and endangered species including gorillas, banteng, dhole and saola. One report calls snares “the greatest threat to the long-term presence of tigers in Southeast Asia.”
- Snaring is difficult to stop. Hunters hide snares from their prey, which makes them hard to spot, though rangers are known to collect thousands. It’s “like a game of hide and seek,” says one expert. “Forest rangers hasten to dismantle snare lines even as poachers reconstruct them at other locations.” Behavior change is one solution.

Study highlights elusive Cameroonian gorillas, and the threats encircling them
- Ebo Forest in southwestern Cameroon hosts a rare and enigmatic population of western gorillas.
- A new study analyzes how gorillas use the forest, finding they primarily inhabit just 2,200 hectares (5,400 acres) within the 200,000-hectare (490,00 acre) forested area, and seem to spend much of their time in small patches of grassland rather than forest.
- Experts say they hope the findings will help guide conservation efforts for the critically endangered species.
- While not directly targeted for hunting, the gorillas face a multitude of threats, including gathering of forest products, a road construction project, and the secondary effects of other species in their habitat being hunted for bushmeat.

Chimps digging wells shows learned behavior that may help amid climate change
- A recent study using camera traps and direct observation documented well-digging behavior in a group of chimpanzees in Uganda, initiated by a female that had immigrated into the group.
- Researchers were surprised to observe this behavior in this rainforest-dwelling population as water tends to be easily accessible in this habitat.
- The findings suggest this learned behavior may be helpful for the conservation of this group, as the chimps have picked up an adaptive measure that could help them survive a drought.

Deforestation in Borneo threatens one in four orangutans, study says
- Deforestation in Borneo will destroy the habitat of more than 26,000 orangutans, a quarter of the population of the critically endangered species, by 2032, a new study says.
- Researchers used historical data and modeling with known drivers of deforestation to project that orangutan habitat a tenth the size of Italy could be lost over the next decade.
- Forests at highest risk of deforestation include those near areas that have already experienced forest loss, as well as industrial timber and oil palm plantation concessions.
- The study suggests the largest immediate conservation gains could come from curbing deforestation in and around plantation landscapes, through efforts such as zero-deforestation pledges, sustainability certification, ecosystem restoration, and a halt on clearing land.

Plantations threaten Indonesia’s orangutans, but they’re not oil palm
- A significant portion of orangutan habitat in Indonesia lies within corporate concessions, but industrial tree companies, like pulp and paper, don’t have strong enough safeguards and commitment to protect the critically endangered apes, a new report says.
- According to the report by Aidenvironment, there are 6.22 million hectares (15.37 million acres) of orangutan habitat within corporate oil palm, logging, and industrial tree concessions.
- Of the three types of concessions, industrial tree companies are the “key stakeholder” as they operate with much less transparency and scrutiny than the palm oil sector, Aidenvironment says.

Data from droppings: Researchers draw up a genetic ID map for chimps
- As part of a broader project studying the cultural and genetic diversity of chimpanzees across Africa, researchers have used fecal samples from 48 sites across the continent to create a genetic identity data set of chimpanzees across the species’ range.
- The data set supports the division of chimpanzees into the four currently recognized subspecies, as well as shedding light on historic gene flow between subspecies and between chimpanzees and bonobos.
- The data set can help conservationists determine the genetic origin of chimpanzees confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade and identify poaching hotspots, researchers say.

Côte d’Ivoire’s chimp habitats are shrinking, but there’s hope in their numbers
- Despite a decade of uncontrolled poaching, researchers have found what they describe as a “healthy” population of 200 chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Comoé National Park.
- With the help of camera-trap footage, researchers found that the Comoé chimps display unique types of behaviors not found in other chimp populations in West Africa.
- Like elsewhere in West Africa, the chimps’ habitat remains under pressure from farming and herding.

Road projects threaten integrity of Uganda’s mountain gorilla stronghold
- Ugandan authorities are considering two road projects through Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to half of the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas.
- The proposed new road will impact connectivity between Bwindi and Sarambwe Nature Reserve in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, says the International Gorilla Conservation Programme.
- Most conservationists don’t dispute the need for improved road infrastructure for nearby communities, but say they’re concerned the government is overlooking less harmful alternatives.

Bonobos torn from the wild make their return, with a helping hand
- An NGO in the Democratic Republic of Congo has returned 14 bonobos into the wild — only the second time ever a bonobo group has been reintroduced to their natural habitat.
- Friends of Bonobos runs a bonobo sanctuary in the DRC where bonobos orphaned by illegal poaching are tended to and rehabilitated.
- The nonprofit released the first group of bonobos in the Ekolo ya Bonobo Community Reserve in 2009, and after more than a decade of preparation and several delays, the second batch was safely moved into the reserve in March.
- The Ekolo ya Bonobo Community Reserve was officially designated a protected area in 2019, and Friends of Bonobos plans to seek National Park status for the forest. This effort could help ensure the two groups remain safe in the wild.

How many orangutans does $1 billion save? Depends how you spend it, study finds
- A recent study evaluating spending on orangutan conservation, calculated to amount to more than $1 billion over the past 20 years, found wide variations in the cost-effectiveness of various conservation activities.
- The study found habitat protection to be by far the most effective measure, followed by patrolling.
- By contrast, habitat restoration; orangutan rescue, rehabilitation, and translocation; and public outreach were found to be less cost-effective.
- The study relied on building a model that correctly accommodated numerous factors, something both the researchers and outside experts highlight as a challenge.

Saving Nigeria’s gorillas was also meant to help communities. It hasn’t (analysis).
- In this analysis, Mongabay contributor Orji Sunday reflects on conversations with people living in and around Nigeria’s Cross River National Park, established in 1991 to protect Cross River gorillas and other threatened species.
- For many people in the area, conservation, whether under British colonial rule or since independence, has been experienced as a loss of autonomy and livelihood, and as a string of broken promises of prosperity.
- With few alternatives and a growing population, people describe becoming ever more dependent on forests and wildlife to survive, regardless of their personal feelings about conservation and apes.
- Well-designed and monitored alternative livelihood initiatives show some chances of success, but scaling them up, and consistently monitoring them, remain challenging.

Civil conflict in Cameroon puts endangered chimpanzees in the crosshairs
- Declared a national park in 2009, Mount Cameroon hosts an array of biodiversity, including endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- Efforts to protect the area have been complicated by an armed conflict, the Anglophone crisis, that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and pushed both refugees and armed combatants into the area’s forests.
- The conflict compounds existing conservation challenges including population pressure, land clearing and conversion, demand for bushmeat, and weak law enforcement.

Call for COVID rules that reduced infections in gorilla parks to remain
- Respiratory infections recorded among mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park dropped from a pre-pandemic average of 5.4 outbreaks among family groups to just 1.6 per year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
- Conservation group Gorilla Doctors, whose Rwanda team recorded the decrease in infections, says the decline correlates with lower visitor numbers to the park as well as masking requirements and an increase in the distance tourists must stay from habituated apes.
- In a recent letter in the journal Nature, Gorilla Doctors and the park’s chief warden called for these stricter measures to be kept in place permanently.

The chimp doctor will see you now: Medicating apes boost the case for conservation
- Researchers in Gabon’s Loango National Park observed chimps applying insects to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of other individuals.
- Researchers identified 76 instances of this behavior being repeated on 22 different chimps.
- Experts say these findings could help guide conservation efforts for not just these endangered great apes, but also their entire ecosystem.

Lockdown underscores Uganda’s overreliance on tourism to fund conservation
- When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020, Uganda quickly shut down parks like Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to protect the gorillas and chimpanzees from getting infected.
- Tourism provides up to 60% of the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s operating revenue and is also an important source of income for communities living around Bwindi.
- Poaching in Bwindi rose sharply during lockdown in 2020 as some villagers entered the park to hunt for food or an income.
- One NGO reinforced its programs supporting public health and livelihoods in an attempt to reduce this pressure.

Uganda’s ‘Dr. Gladys’ honored by U.N. for work linking conservation and health
- The United Nations on Dec. 7 recognized Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka as one of its “champions of the Earth” for promoting the One Health approach to conservation in Africa.
- The Ugandan conservationist, a trained wildlife veterinarian, established the NGO Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) in 2003 to ensure better health care access for communities living around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and to lower the risk of human pathogens jumping to mountain gorillas.
- UNEP selected Kalema-Zikusoka for its science and innovation category; the other awardees were Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Kyrgyz youth activist Maria Kolesnikova, and the nonprofit Sea Women of Melanesia.
- “If you make the community feel that you care about them, then there’s less need to fight them,” Kalema-Zikusoka said.

U.K. conglomerate Jardines ‘caught red-handed’ clearing orangutan habitat in Sumatra
- A U.K. conglomerate’s Indonesian subsidiary is deforesting the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, despite promising to stop doing so, satellite imagery indicates.
- Since April this year, PT Agincourt Resources has cleared 13 hectares (32 acres) of rainforest in Sumatra for its Martabe gold mine, on top of the 100 hectares (247 acres) deforested since 2016.
- Agincourt is a subsidiary of Astra International, Indonesia’s biggest conglomerate, which in turn is a subsidiary of London-listed Jardine Matheson; the latter in 2019 agreed not to expand farther into Tapanuli orangutan habitat following a campaign by the NGO Mighty Earth.
- But the latest satellite imagery shows it has been “caught red-handed,” said Mighty Earth, which also noted that customers of Astra International’s palm oil subsidiary, including Unilever and Hershey’s, were also calling for a group-wide no-deforestation commitment.

For world’s rarest gorillas, camera traps prove pivotal for protection
- Cross River gorillas are Africa’s rarest and most endangered ape, once thought to have already been driven to extinction.
- Camera traps have emerged as a critical tool for monitoring the health and population sizes of the subspecies.
- Recent images have shown multiple young gorillas, which conservationists take as a sign that protection measures are working, and which have also helped raise awareness and funding for Cross River gorilla conservation.

Report: Orangutans and their habitat in Indonesia need full protection now
- A new report underscores the urgency of protecting Indonesia’s orangutans and conserving their remaining habitat, warning that Asia’s only great ape is in crisis.
- The report from the Environmental Investigation Agency says the Indonesian government has systematically failed to protect orangutan habitat, enforce existing wildlife laws, or reverse the decline of the three orangutan species.
- “For decades, Indonesia has prioritized industry and profit over environmental health and biodiversity protection, and orangutans have paid the price,” said EIA policy analyst Taylor Tench.
- The report calls for protecting all orangutan habitat (much of which occurs in oil palm and logging concessions), halting a dam project in the only habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, and recognizing Indigenous claims to forests adjacent to orangutan habitat.

Think that GIF of the smoking chimp is funny? The chimp wasn’t laughing
- While a GIF of an ape engaging in “human” behavior may seem cute, the animals used to create such images were often subjected to abuse.
- Experts also say such images can perpetuate the myth that apes make good pets, fueling the international trade in these endangered animals.
- Campaigners have successfully convinced major stock photography agencies to stop providing images of apes in unnatural situations, but popular GIF agencies still do not have specific policies against such images.

In rural Nigeria, the magic of cinema builds support for ape conservation
- Since 2006, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has worked with local groups to screen documentaries about apes in dozens of communities adjoining protected areas where Cross River gorillas are still found.
- The films aim to build knowledge about apes and support for conservation; conservationists say film screenings, which are still a novelty in rural areas, attract a broader audience than radio shows, town hall meetings or other outreach methods.
- Though they live close to ape habitats, for many people in these rural communities, films are as close as they will come to encountering the rare and cryptic animals that live nearby.

On Nigeria-Cameroon border, joint patrols throw a lifeline to threatened apes
- The rugged, isolated forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border support a vast array of wildlife, including Cross River gorillas, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, and forest elephants.
- Historically, limited law enforcement in the border zone has left the ecosystem vulnerable to hunting and logging.
- Since the early 1990s, though, NGOs have been working alongside both governments to enhance transboundary conservation efforts, including joint patrols by rangers from both countries.
- This cross-border collaboration faces many obstacles today, including bureaucratic delays, treacherous terrain, armed poachers, and violent conflict in Cameroon, but participants remain optimistic about the potential for cooperation.

COVID could wreak havoc on gorillas, but they social distance better than we do
- A new study models the potential impacts of a COVID-19 outbreak in mountain gorillas using 50 years of population data collected in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park with epidemiological variables gathered on COVID-19 infection in humans.
- In most of the scenarios modeled, gorilla populations were found to decline sharply within 50 years of an outbreak.
- Questions remain as to whether the human epidemiological variables used in the analysis are a good fit for gorillas, which spend all of their time outdoors and interact with non-family members far less frequently than humans do.

In Guinea, an illegal $6b gold ‘bonanza’ threatens endangered chimpanzees
- Earlier this year, Australia’s Predictive Discovery announced that it had found more than $6 billion in “bonanza”-grade gold deposits in eastern Guinea.
- A Mongabay investigation has found that the company’s exploration is taking place inside the boundaries of Haut Niger National Park, in violation of the law establishing the park.
- The park is home to an estimated 500 western chimpanzees, one of the highest concentrations of the critically endangered primate in West Africa.

High risk, low pay for DRC rangers entrusted to guard a gorilla sanctuary
- Marie Jeanne Bora Ntianabo was drawn to the extraordinary commitment of park rangers while she was still a child.
- Now 29, she loves her job as a ranger despite danger of being ambushed by poachers or armed groups operating in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- The work doesn’t pay well, especially due to reduced numbers of tourists that the park depends on for revenue, but Ntianabo says she isn’t tempted by the profits others seek while harming the park’s ecosystems and wildlife.

Gorilla baby boom sparks hope in DRC, but threats to great apes persist
- For three years in a row, Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been reporting new births in gorilla families.
- According to park officials, the baby boom is thanks to conservation efforts in Virunga that have promoted wildlife development.
- Conservationists warn that armed groups in the park still pose a threat to gorillas, as do moves to reclassify parts of protected areas for mining.

‘Acts of poaching and other crimes’: Cameroon plans a new road in Lobéké National Park
- Cameroon has notified UNESCO of plans to build a road in Lobéké National Park, part of the World Heritage listed Sangha Tri-National protected area.
- The country’s Minister for Forestry and Wildlife says the road will help to secure the area against cross-border poachers and others engaged in criminal activities, but conservationists are concerned it could facilitate deforestation.
- A study of Gabon’s Minkébé National Park linked heavy poaching in the north of the park to easy access via a highway just across its border with Cameroon.

Causes for celebration, and concern, on World Gorilla Day
- As conservationists across the globe observe World Gorilla Day this Sept. 24, all species and subspecies of the ape remain either endangered or critically endangered.
- It’s not all bad news for gorillas, though, as conservation strategies have led to concrete gains, including growth of some gorilla populations.
- Here, Mongabay reflects on some of the lessons from this year’s news and new research.

For World Gorilla Day 2021, a conservation success story
- The NGO that helped establish World Gorilla Day — the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund — has learned a few important lessons for the conservation of gorillas and other species over the years.
- Firstly, conservation can’t happen without local support: when community members they work with come to understand the importance of the habitat that surrounds them, the project can succeed. Another lesson is that conservation takes time, money and diversification.
- “By engaging rather than excluding communities and ensuring that local people benefit from conservation, we have found that we can protect wildlife with a footprint that is 15 times smaller than that for mountain gorillas.”
- This article is an analysis for World Gorilla Day 2021 by the chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Scientists look to chimps’ past to gauge their future under climate change
- In a new study, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees rode out periods of global change over the past 120,000 years, revealing insights into how they might be affected by future climate change.
- The team identified important long-term, resilient chimpanzee habitat in the Upper and Lower Guinean forests of West and Central Africa, and the Albertine Rift in East Africa that had been previously overlooked.
- The authors stress the vital role of understanding the past in predicting how future climate changes will affect wildlife abundance and distribution.

For male chimps looking to mate, an entourage is the way to go, study finds
- A recent study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park found that males who create strong ties to alpha males, or who form large networks or alliances with other males, were more likely to father offspring.
- Researchers say the social bonds formed between males provided access to mating opportunities which they would not have been able to access without allies.
- While further studies are necessary, experts say the findings could help understand optimal group sizes and thus the necessary range for wild populations.

L.A.-sized tract of primary forest went up in flames in DRC province in 2020
- In 2020, more than 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of old-growth forest burned in Sankuru province, including extensive tracts in a nature reserve.
- Overall, the DRC recorded its second-biggest decline in primary forest cover last year, according to data from Global Forest Watch (GFW), a platform developed by World Resources Institute.
- Forests in the country face increasing pressure from a constellation of factors: a growing population, climatic shifts like shorter rainy seasons, and, more recently, COVID-19-linked turmoil.
- In the past two years alone, more than 1,000 km2 (390 mi2) of land in Sankuru Nature Reserve was set alight.

Warming climate means scientists may have overcounted bonobos, study says
- The pervasive effects of climate change in the Congo Basin have resulted in scientists overestimating bonobo populations, a recent study says.
- Ape surveys rely on nest counts to estimate wild populations, but climatic data from 2003-2018 suggests that long-term weather patterns affect how long it takes ape nests to decay.
- They discovered that decay time in the Congo Basin has increased by 17 days, raising concerns about potential inaccuracies in population counts not only for bonobos, but also for other great apes for whom population estimates rely on nest counts.

For Africa’s great apes, even ‘best-case’ climate change will decimate habitat
- Africa’s great apes stand to lose up to 94% of their current suitable habitat by 2050 if humanity makes no effort to slow greenhouse gas emissions, a new study warns.
- Even under the “best-case” scenario, in which global warming can be slowed, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos would still lose 85% of their range.
- The apes’ habitat is under pressure from human encroachment, clearing of wild areas, and climate change impacts that are rendering existing habitats no longer suitable.
- Researchers say there’s a possibility of “range gain,” where climate change makes currently unsuitable areas habitable for the apes, but warn it could take the slow-adapting animals thousands of years to make the move — much slower than the rate at which their current habitat is being lost.

Overcoming community-conservation conflict: Q&A with Dominique Bikaba
- Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is renowned for its biodiversity. The area is also home to the Batwa people, who are highly dependent on its forests for their livelihoods and cultural traditions.
- Efforts to protect these forests are challenged by conservation’s mixed record: Kahuzi-Biega’s expansion in the 1970s forced the displacement of thousands of local people, turning them into conservation refugees and sowing distrust in conservation initiatives.
- One of the local organizations leading efforts to overcome these challenges is Strong Roots Congo, which was co-founded by Dominique Bikaba in 2009. Strong Roots Congo puts the needs of local people at the center of its strategy to protect endangered forests and wildlife in eastern DRC.
- “Strong Roots’ approach to conservation is bottom-up, collaborative, and inclusive,” Bikaba said during a recent conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Without room to expand, mountain gorillas’ population growth could backfire
- Mountain gorilla populations have grown steadily in recent decades, thanks largely to intensive conservation efforts in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- But the species’ entire population is confined to protected parks in these countries, with limited room to expand, and as the population has grown, so too has population density.
- A new study that tracked the incidence and intensity of parasitic infections across the mountain gorilla’s range suggests that greater population density correlates with greater susceptibility to parasites and other health problems.

Not all rescued animals should be released back to the wild (commentary)
- Articles about animals released from captivity (or rehabilitation after injury) get clicks, likes and lots of shares, and it would be easy to assume that doing this is the top job for all wildlife sanctuaries.
- As appealing as this image is, sanctuaries must first determine what is in the best interest of the animal, like whether it can survive where it’s being released.
- How do they determine which animals should be returned to the wild, and which should remain at the sanctuary? It’s complicated, but sometimes the best move is to keep an animal in captivity.
- This article is a commentary, and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New survey nearly doubles Grauer’s gorilla population, but threats remain
- A recent survey led by the Wildlife Conservation Society has revised the population estimate for Grauer’s gorillas to 6,800, up from a 2016 estimate of 3,800.
- The survey includes data from the Oku community forests in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which could not be surveyed in 2016 due to security issues.
- Endemic to the eastern DRC, Grauer’s gorillas are still classed as critically endangered, and face threats due to mining and bushmeat hunting.
- The large numbers of gorillas observed in the community forests surrounding Kahuzi-Biéga National Park underscore the importance of engaging local communities in conservation.

Deforestation spikes in Virunga National Park, DRC
- Satellite data has detected several dramatic spikes in deforestation activity in Virunga National Park in 2021.
- Virunga National Park is situated in the northeastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), right over its border with Uganda.
- Virunga is home to many endangered species and subspecies, including mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).
- The park’s major threats include logging for charcoal production and clearing for agriculture, both of which are driven by poverty.

Deforestation intensifies in northern DRC protected areas
- Satellite data from the University of Maryland are showing recent spikes in deforestation activity in the northern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
- Forest loss appears to be affecting protected areas, including Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Bili-Uéré.
- Major drivers of deforestation in the DRC include logging, charcoal production, agriculture and informal mining, which sources say are aided by government inaction.

Lean times leave orangutans wasting away. Habitat loss makes things worse
- Bornean orangutans experience muscle loss when fruit is scarce, as the fat reserves they build up during periods of high fruit availability aren’t enough to meet their needs, a new study has found.
- The researchers say this is surprising because orangutans are known for their tendency to store fat in order to adapt to periods of low food availability.
- The findings highlight that any further disruptions of their fruit supply — including climate change and habitat loss — could have dire consequences for their health and survival.

FSC-certified Indonesian logger may have cleared orangutan habitat: Report
- A secretive Indonesian company group, Alas Kusuma, has allegedly cleared orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo, according to a new report by the NGO Aidenvironment.
- The company is the second-largest deforester in Indonesia’s pulp and paper sector, according to the report, which links it to the clearing of 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of forest from 2016 to 2021.
- Little is known about the company, but it has business links to Japanese companies and is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Deadly landslide hits Indonesian dam project in orangutan habitat, again
- A landslide at the site of a hydropower plant located in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan has claimed the lives of three people, with nine others still missing.
- It’s the second deadly landslide here in the past five months, with the project sitting in an area that’s prone to natural disasters, including earthquakes.
- Activists say the back-to-back landslides are reason enough for the area to be protected, instead of being licensed for large-scale projects, such as mining and infrastructure.

Caring for those ‘just like us’: Q&A with vet and great ape advocate Rick Quinn
- Veterinarian Rick Quinn is the founder of Docs4GreatApes, a charitable organization that supports health care for great apes while also helping the communities surrounding them and the environment they share.
- His new book, with an introduction by Jane Goodall, chronicles the lessons he learned about ape conservation in Africa and Asia, accompanied by his own photos of gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans; all proceeds go back into supporting his foundation’s work.
- He emphasizes the importance of community well-being and empowerment as part of effective conservation, pointing to initiatives where building trust and creating goodwill led to communities becoming willing partners in gorilla conservation.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Quinn discusses his new book, his discomfort with the kind of selfie tourism that puts great apes at potential risk, the COVID-19 pandemic, and his role as an activist veterinarian.

Unrelated adoptions by bonobos may point to altruistic traits, study says
- Two wild bonobos in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were observed to adopt infants from different social groups, according to a new study.
- These are said to be the first recorded cases of great apes adopting unrelated individuals.
- While the researchers do not know why these bonobos chose to adopt unrelated infants, they speculate that it could be to strengthen current and future alliances within their own groups as well as with other social groups.

The Hungry Mills: How palm oil mills drive deforestation (commentary)
- In this commentary, Earthworm Foundation’s Rob McWilliam argues that palm oil mills are playing a large role in driving the palm oil industry’s destruction of the world’s rainforests, and that this role is often ignored.
- McWilliam writes that new research shows how to end the damage palm oil mills are causing.
- This article is a commentary and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Forest patches amid agriculture are key to orangutan survival: Study
- A recent study highlights the importance of small fragments of forest amid landscapes dominated by agriculture for the survival of orangutans in Southeast Asia.
- The research, drawing on several decades of ground and aerial surveys in Borneo, found that orangutans are adapting to the presence of oil palm plantations — if they have access to nearby patches of forest.
- The authors say agricultural plantations could serve as corridors allowing for better connectivity and gene flow within the broader orangutan population.

Podcast: Omens and optimism for Sumatran orangutans
- The Sumatran orangutan is a lowland species that has adapted to life among this Indonesian island’s highlands, as it has lost its favored habitat to an array of forces.
- From forest degradation to new road projects, plus the trafficking of young ones to be sold as pets, this great ape is increasingly in trouble.
- On this episode of the podcast, Mongabay speaks with the founding director of Orangutan Information Centre in North Sumatra about these challenges and also some hopeful signs.
- The Centre is successfully involving local communities in this work: over 2,400 hectares of rainforest have been replanted by local women since 2008, creating key habitat for the orangutans which also provides villagers with useful agroforestry crops, for instance.

Deforestation spurred by road project creeps closer to Sumatra wildlife haven
- A road in Sumatra that cuts through the only habitat on Earth that houses rhinos, tigers, elephants and orangutans has recently been upgraded, stoking fears of greater human incursion into the rainforest.
- Already the upgrades have seen a proliferation of human settlements along a section of the road in a forest adjacent to Gunung Leuser National Park, resulting in the loss of 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of forest.
- Environmentalists say it’s only a matter of time before the encroachment spreads into the national park, triggering fears that it will fragment the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran orangutans.
- The road upgrade was carried out despite calls against it from UNESCO, which lists the national park as part of a World Heritage Site and has identified infrastructure projects as a threat to the ecosystem.

First COVID-19 cases in zoo gorillas raise alarm about wild populations
- Gorillas at San Diego Zoo in California have tested positive for COVID-19, the first cases of the novel coronavirus infecting great apes.
- Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans share more than 95% of the human genome and are known to be at risk from certain human diseases.
- Zoo authorities said an asymptomatic staff member might have infected the gorillas.
- The news is likely to send alarm bells ringing, especially in Africa, home to the only wild populations of gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

Historical data point to ‘imminent extinction’ of Tapanuli orangutan
- A new study indicates that the Tapanuli orangutan, already the world’s most threatened great ape species, faces a much greater risk of extinction than previously thought.
- It estimates the orangutans today occupy just 2.5% of their historical range, and attributes this to loss of habitat and hunting.
- Those threats persist today and are compounded by mining and infrastructure projects inside the Tapanuli orangutan’s last known habitat in northern Sumatra.
- At the current rates at which its habitat is being lost and the ape is being hunted, the extinction of the Tapanuli orangutan is inevitable, the researchers say.

Indonesia’s plantation program on collision course with wildlife, Indigenous groups
- Indonesia’s food estate program threatens to overlap onto habitats of key species like orangutans and tigers in Sumatra, according to a government map.
- Environmental activists warn this could exacerbate human-wildlife conflicts, and have criticized the lack of an environmental assessment before the start of the program.
- Also at threat are forests that Indigenous communities rely on for their livelihoods, with the government again failing to involve them in the planning process.
- The government claims it mapped the food estate areas in a way to minimize disturbances to known wildlife habitats.

Worker feared dead as landslide hits quake-prone dam in orangutan habitat
- A North Sumatra resident has gone missing and is feared dead after a landslide struck the site of a hydropower plant located in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- Afuan Ritonga, 38, was swept into the Batang Toru River by a torrent of mud on Dec. 4, during an operation to clear away debris from a landslide that struck the previous day following heavy rains.
- The excavator that Afuan was operating was later reportedly discovered downstream, but he remains missing.
- The government has identified the area as having a medium to high risk of landslides, while environmental activists and scientists say the region is also prone to earthquakes because it sits near a tectonic fault line.

Podcast: Will a newly discovered ape species face a dammed future?
- As with many animals in Sumatra, the newly described 8th ape species are unique creatures that are critically threatened, with a maximum of 800 individuals estimated to be living in an increasingly fragmented habitat.
- First described in 2017 after its habits and DNA proved them to be unique, the Tapanuli orangutan faces an uncertain future.
- A hydroelectric dam proposed for the center of the animals’ tiny territory challenges this special species’ chances of survival, as well as that of 23 other threatened species which also live in the area.
- This episode of the podcast speaks with a biologist who helped discover its uniqueness, Dr. Puji Rianti of IPB University in Bogor, and Mongabay staff writer Hans Nicholas Jong in Jakarta, who has been covering the controversy over the project, as it’s been called into question by activists and funders alike and faces numerous delays.

Conservation must be primary goal of great ape tourism, despite COVID-driven recessions (commentary)
- The months-long closure of national parks and continued travel restrictions due to COVID-19 has disrupted a critical revenue source for great ape conservation: sustainable tourism.
- Countries which rely on tourism as a significant source of their GDP must continue to place biodiversity principles at the heart of recovery efforts, and explore alternative livelihood options for local communities.
- Where great ape tourism is concerned, conservation must always be the primary goal of any endeavor.
- This article is a commentary, the views expressed are not necessarily those of Mongabay.

Podcast: Mongabay explores Sumatra, a land like no other
- Sumatra is the only place in the world where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans all live together in the same expanse of rainforest. Its plant life is also extremely diverse.
- For a new edition of the Mongabay Explores podcast series, we will explore the island’s incredible biological richness and environmental challenges.
- On this first episode, host Mike DiGirolamo speaks with Sumatran winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize Rudi Putra and biologist Greg McCann, who provide a fascinating look at the incredible biodiversity of this, the world’s sixth largest island.
- A new episode will air approximately every two weeks, subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast via your podcast provider of choice to hear them all.

In Uganda, safeguarding chimpanzees against the scourge of snaring
- Frequent patrols in Uganda’s Kibale National Park are credited with helping reduce the risk of the resident chimpanzees falling victim to the snare traps set by poachers targeting bushmeat.
- While chimpanzees aren’t typically eaten here as bushmeat, the indiscriminate nature of the traps means they still risk being killed or severely maimed.
- A booming human population on the periphery of the park is putting pressure on the wildlife inside, with hunters not just targeting small game for bushmeat, but also forest elephants for ivory.
- The frequency at which chimps get snared here has gone down from one incident every nine months, to once in 15 months, with rangers finding and removing about 45 snare traps a month.

Podcast: A radio program is helping save critically endangered gorillas in Nigeria
- Community-based conservation measures are key to protecting the Cross River gorilla, and a radio program that reaches as many as 4 million listeners in Nigeria is encouraging local community members to become active participants in conservation.
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Hillary Chukwuemeka, host of the radio program, which is called “My Gorilla My Community.” Chukwuemeka talks about why radio is an effective medium for community engagement in Nigeria and the impacts he’s seen from time spent in local communities on the front lines of conservation.
- We’re also joined by Inaoyom Imong, program director for the Cross River landscape with Wildlife Conservation Society Nigeria and a member of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group, who discusses the major threats to Cross River gorillas, the main barriers to their conservation, and why community-based conservation measures are so important in this context.

Beyond tourism: A call for business ideas that protect African wildlife, ecosystems
- The African Leadership University has launched an innovation challenge to develop new commercial ideas for rural livelihoods that protect biodiversity.
- Wildlife tourism is the best-known “conservation business,” but it’s unclear how much it directly contributes to funding conservation, even if it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Applicants to the innovation challenge will develop non-tourism business ideas that will protect ecosystems, empower communities, and convince investors they are both scalable and financially sustainable.

Podcast: Great ape ‘forest gardeners of Africa’ benefit from conservation victory
- Great ape conservation in Africa relies on forest protection, and vice versa.
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a look at two stories that illustrate how conservation of Africa’s Great Apes — chimpanzees and gorillas — often goes hand in hand with forest conservation efforts.
- We welcome to the program Ekwoge Abwe, head of the Ebo Forest Research Project in Cameroon. Abwe tells us the story of how he became the first scientist to discover Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees using tools to crack open nuts and discusses ongoing efforts to safeguard Ebo Forest against the threats of oil palm expansion and logging.
- We also speak with Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an associate researcher at Cambridge University who shares how chimpanzees were among the seed-dispersing species that helped central Africa’s rainforests regenerate after they collapsed some 2,500 years ago.

A mysterious heart bone in chimps points to cardiac disease
- Chimpanzees and other great apes are widely afflicted by heart disease; three-quarters of chimps that die in captivity have been found to suffer from heart disease, and up to 90% of captive chimps could have it.
- Using high-resolution 3D imaging, a team of researchers discovered that some chimp hearts contain a tiny bone known as an os cordis.
- Researchers do not yet know how, or why, the bone forms in chimps, but it appears to be more prevalent in those with heart disease.
- Researchers hope this finding will help conservationists keep captive chimps healthy, and increase broader knowledge of chimpanzee pathology.

Indonesia dam builder refuses new study to assess impact on orangutans
- A dam developer in Indonesia has rebuffed calls for an independent study to assess the impact of the project on the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- The species, numbering fewer than 800, is found only in the Batang Toru forest in Sumatra, which is also the site of a hydropower project that conservationists say threatens the survival of the great ape and livelihoods of local communities.
- The IUCN has led calls for an independent assessment, citing a litany of inaccurate and misleading claims stemming from the project developer’s various statements and publications.

‘We are losing’: Q&A with The Orangutan Project’s Leif Cocks on saving the great ape
- For International Orangutan Day, Mongabay spoke with Leif Cocks, founder and president of The Orangutan Project, which seeks to protect the endangered orange-haired primates and their rapidly disappearing habitats in Southeast Asia.
- All three species of orangutans — Sumatran (Pongo abelii), Bornean (P. pygmaeus) and Tapanuli (P. tapanuliensis) are one step away from extinction.
- Deforestation is the biggest threat the primates face, and at the moment most conservation efforts have only been able to slow forest loss, not turn the tide around, Leif told Mongabay.
- Oil palm plantations replacing primary rainforests is a major problem in Malaysia and Indonesia, but Cocks says simply banning these plantations is not the answer; instead, he advocates for replacing exploitative production systems with those that recognize the services that these forests provide to the local communities and building on that.

A genetic map hopes to trace rescued chimps back to their homes
- There are four recognized chimpanzee subspecies, each with a distinct range and unique genetic makeup
- When chimpanzees are rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, it can be almost impossible for conservationists to identify where a chimpanzee originally came from.
- Scientists are working to create a genetic reference map for chimpanzees, with the aim of enabling conservationists and law enforcement to pinpoint a chimpanzee’s place of origin and identify poaching hotspots.

Cameroon halts logging plans in Ebo Forest, home to tool-using chimps
- The Cameroon government announced that a logging concession for Ebo Forest, which was approved three weeks ago, has been cancelled.
- Ebo Forest is a large, intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon that is a refuge for a number of endangered and critically endangered species, including a population of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees with a unique repertoire of tool use.
- While conservationists are optimistic about this news, they are also concerned that the future of the forest still remains uncertain.

For tool-wielding chimps of Ebo Forest, logging plan is a ‘death sentence’
- Ebo Forest is the largest intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon, spanning more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres), and providing refuge to a multitude of rare species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, and a tiny and enigmatic population of western gorillas.
- The Cameroon government recently approved a logging concession for Ebo Forest, which would allow trees in 68,385 hectares (169,000 acres) of the region to be harvested, despite opposition from conservationists and local communities.
- Ebo Forest was previously slated to be transformed into a national park, an effort spearheaded by WWF, but plans were dashed in 2013, reportedly because of lack of funding.
- Conservationists worry that logging, and any concomitant activities, such as illegal forest destruction and poaching, will place considerable pressure on endangered and critically endangered species, and that the biodiversity of the forest would be compromised.

Nigeria’s wildlife traders, who weathered Ebola, eye post-COVID-19 boom
- Restrictions imposed by the Nigerian government to slow the spread of COVID-19 have hampered field operations of conservation agencies and NGOs, who are turning to creative and high-tech solutions to maintain operations.
- Conservationists fear that a reduction in patrols and enforcement leaves Nigeria’s biodiversity — already under pressure due to a vast wildlife trade — extremely vulnerable.
- In Nigeria’s wildlife markets, some traders report a downturn due to a generally slow economy, and to movement restrictions on customers. However, they say a ban on interstate travel has not stopped the flow of wildlife products between forests and cities.

Dam that threatens orangutan habitat faces three-year delay
- Environmental, funding, and pandemic-related concerns may delay the construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island by up to three years, officials say.
- The Batang Toru hydropower plant site is located in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, and conservationists have called for it to be scrapped or at least suspended to allow for an independent impact analysis.
- Major lenders including the World Bank’s International Financial Corporation and the Asian Development Bank have steered clear of the project, while main funder the Bank of China has promised a review in light of the environmental concerns.
- The IUCN has also issued a fact-checking report that debunks several claims by project developer PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy downplaying the impact of the plant on the orangutans and other wildlife in the area.

For the world’s rarest gorillas, a troubled sanctuary
- Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary (AMWS), near the Nigeria-Cameroon border, was established in 2000 to serve as a refuge for endangered primates including Cross River gorillas.
- Of an estimated 300 Cross River gorillas, around 100 live in a patchwork of adjoining protected areas: AMWS, Mbe Mountains, and the Okwangwo division of Cross River National Park.
- Though officially protected, the AMWS suffers from encroachment for hunting, logging and agriculture. Conservationists say rangers and resources are too few to effectively protect the sanctuary.
- Without a major commitment from the Cross River state government, the sanctuary “may very well be doomed,” one expert says.

10-year plan hopes to give western chimpanzees a fighting chance
- The IUCN recently released its latest 10-year action plan for the critically endangered western chimpanzee.
- Poaching, habitat loss and disease were identified as the key threats to the species.
- These threats were found to be exacerbated by the high rate of population growth in West Africa, resulting in rapid agricultural expansion and a demand for economic development projects.
- The IUCN plan sets out nine strategies to be implemented between 2020 and 2030; they include filling research gaps, ensuring chimpanzees are considered in land use planning, improving legal protection, and raising awareness of the plight of western chimpanzees.

Camera snaps first ever glimpse of a troop of the world’s rarest gorilla
- A camera in Nigeria’s Mbe Mountains captured the first known images of a large group of Cross River gorillas, including adults, juveniles and babies, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
- It’s estimated that there are about 300 Cross River gorillas left in the world, with about a third of the population living in three contiguous sites in Nigeria, and 30 to 35 individuals based in the Mbe Mountains.
- Due to conservation efforts, no Cross River gorillas have been reported poached since 2012, according to WCS.

Podcast: Animals have culture, too, and for some it’s crucial to their survival and conservation
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we explore animal culture and social learning with author Carl Safina and whale researcher Hal Whitehead.
- Carl Safina examines the capacity of several animal species for social learning and transmitting knowledge across generations in his new book, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. Safina appears on the Mongabay Newscast today to explain how sperm whales, scarlet macaws, and chimpanzees are equipped to live in the world they live in as much by what they learn from other individuals in their social groups as by their genetic inheritance.
- Hal Whitehead, a professor at Canada’s Dalhousie University, was one of the first scientists to examine the complex social lives of sperm whales and the distinctive calls known as codas that they use to establish their group and personal identities. He appears on the podcast today to play us some recordings of sperm whale codas and tell us about sperm whale culture and social learning.

‘Rafiki’s trust was betrayed’: Q&A with conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
- In early June, rangers discovered the mutilated body of Rafiki, an endangered silverback mountain gorilla living at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda; four men have since been arrested on suspicion of poaching.
- Rafiki led the Nkuringo gorilla group for the past 12 years, and he’d become a well-known individual to tourists visiting the park.
- Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, one of the leading conservationists working to protect endangered mountain gorillas, says the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an upsurge of poaching in Bwindi, which helped pave the way to Rafiki’s death.
- Rafiki and his group were also “habituated,” meaning they’d become accustomed to people. While this may have made it easier for poachers to kill him, gorilla habituation has allowed tourism to thrive in Uganda.

Chimps prefer human crops, scientists find — and it’s better for them
- Entering agricultural areas to eat crops puts chimps at risk of injury or death, but a growing body of research suggests that the nutritional benefits of cultivated food keep chimps coming back.
- In a recent paper, a team of researchers carefully studied the diets of chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea, an area where their natural habitat has been partially cleared for farming.
- They found that the crops eaten by chimpanzees were better sources of basic nutrition than available wild foods.
- The research also indicated that chimpanzees’ foraging preferences are highly specific — troops in different areas preferred different crops — indicating that any mitigation efforts must be informed by the realities of both humans and non-human apes sharing a particular landscape.

Mystery ailments, asymptomatic individuals: Spotlight on monkeypox in chimps
- In 2017 and 2018, monkeypox viral outbreaks struck three chimpanzee communities in Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire.
- Researchers investigating the outbreaks found that very few individuals actually showed the characteristic smallpox-like skin rashes on their bodies associated with monkeypox; many chimps that only exhibited respiratory symptoms like coughing with few or no rashes also had high viral loads of monkeypox virus DNA in their feces.
- Detecting monkeypox viral DNA in individuals with only respiratory symptoms suggests that the same might be true in humans, researchers say, which could mean that monkeypox cases could be going undiagnosed.
- This study is the first-of-its kind deep dive into monkeypox virus transmission among wild primates.

Loss, resilience and community amid an outbreak: Q&A with gorilla researcher Magdalena Bermejo
- Magdalena Bermejo, a prominent expert on western lowland gorillas, experienced the loss of thousands of the great apes to Ebola, including two groups she and her team were studying and had worked to habituate.
- Having remained in the Republic of Congo, Bermejo is now facing the arrival of a new epidemic that could potentially spread between humans and gorillas.
- In this interview, Bermejo discusses her ongoing work in the Congo, the importance of working with communities, parallels between Ebola and COVID-19, and how researchers can find the strength to persevere and rebuild in the aftermath of catastrophe.

When the world’s rarest primate couples up, it’s a win for the species
- The Hainan gibbon, the rarest primate in the world, nearly went extinct in the 1970s, but the species is slowly rebounding, with a population of about 30 individuals in Hainan, an island off southern China.
- Conservationists recently discovered that a male and female formed a new “family” unit that’s living outside the species’ current range in the Hainan Bawangling National Nature Reserve, with a baby potentially due later this year.
- The species’ recovery is attributed to conservation efforts, which have included local monitoring teams, a tree-planting program, and community education.
- One of the biggest concerns over the Hainan gibbon is lack of genetic diversity, given the small gene pool, which can lead to poor health and fertility problems.

For the western chimpanzee, sanctuaries are more than just a last resort
- West Africa’s chimpanzee population has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, falling from an estimated 1 million to fewer than 300,000 today.
- Across West Africa, a network of sanctuaries is working to provide shelter for chimpanzees rescued from traffickers.
- Members of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance say their work goes beyond simply caring for individual apes, extending to protecting wild chimpanzee populations and supporting the people who share their habitats.

For Freedom the gorilla, a months-long journey back to the wilds of Cameroon
- In August 2019, a lone male gorilla wandered into a primate sanctuary in Cameroon, likely in search of a mate.
- Because the sanctuary is in a heavily populated area, Ape Action Africa, which operates the Mefou Park, felt an immediate release would not be safe for the gorilla or the surrounding communities.
- After a painstaking search for a suitable release site, the ape, named Freedom, became the first rescued gorilla to be returned to the wild in Cameroon.

For world’s rarest great ape, COVID-19 is latest in a litany of threats
- Scientists have called for all projects in the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan in Sumatra to be halted to prevent the possible transmission of COVID-19 to the great apes.
- The orangutans wouldn’t necessarily have to come into direct contact with humans to catch the virus; they could catch it indirectly via other primate species.
- The species already faces pressure from the construction of a hydropower project in its only known habitat and the expansion of nearby oil palm plantations.
- A new study finds the hydropower project developer cleared an area of forest larger than New York City’s Central Park, and that the orangutan population density in the affected area has declined, suggesting the apes are being driven out of their habitat.

Images from a dropped phone reveal the ugly truth behind bonobo trafficking
- Bonobos, an endangered great ape with a population that may be as low as 10,000, face serious threats from hunting for bushmeat and for the live trade.
- Conserv Congo, an NGO based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the only country where bonobos occur, actively pursues poachers, seeking to achieve arrests and convictions.
- In February 2020, a team from ConservCongo disrupted bonobo poachers in action. The poachers fled, but left behind a gravely wounded mother bonobo, and a mobile phone containing images that depict the brutal realities of how the apes are killed and captured.

Rescuing orangutans ‘doesn’t work’ for apes or forests, studies find
- New research suggests taking Bornean orangutans from degraded habitat and moving them to new areas is not good for the animals themselves and negatively affects forest conservation efforts.
- Orangutans have been found to survive in mixed areas of palm oil and forest and even better in selectively logged forests, scientists say.
- But NGOs argue that, in many situations, orangutans need to be moved to avoid conflict with fruit farmers, and risk being shot if they are left in situ.

For great apes at risk of infection, COVID-19 is also an economic threat
- With flights grounded, parks closed and countries on lockdown, COVID-19 has dealt a major blow to great ape-focused ecotourism operations in Africa and Asia.
- Many conservation activities rely directly on revenue from tourism, and the money tourism brings in also provides a financial incentive for governments and local communities to protect wildlife.
- If lockdowns persist for months, the consequences could be devastating for fragile ape populations and the communities that surround them.
- The situation has re-emphasized the need for conservation groups to diversify their fundraising strategies, experts say.

Nigeria declares new conservation zone for most threatened chimpanzee
- The government of Nigeria’s Ekiti state has issued an executive order establishing a conservation area within the Ise Forest Reserve, where about 20 Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees are believed to survive.
- With perhaps as few as 3,500 left in the wild, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee faces threats including hunting, logging and forest clearing for agriculture across its range.
- Upgrading the reserve to a conservation area will put stricter forest-protection measures in place.
- Before doing so, conservationists say they will work to gain the consent and support of forest-dependent communities in the area.

National parks in Africa shutter over COVID-19 threat to great apes
- Wildlife authorities in some parts of Africa have effectively locked down parks that are home to gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, amid concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic could make the jump to great apes.
- Humans and great apes share more than 95% of the same genetic material, and are susceptible to many of the same infectious diseases, ranging from respiratory ailments to Ebola.
- Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shut its doors to tourists this week, while in Rwanda all parks hosting gorillas and chimpanzees were also shut; Uganda is considering doing the same, with its parks de facto closed because of a drop in tourist arrivals.
- Even if the apes avoid COVID-19, the loss of tourism revenue for the parks and potential loss of income for people who work to protect these species could cause enduring damage to conservation efforts, experts say.

Keeping gorillas safe amid COVID-19 concerns
- Gorillas are vulnerable to human diseases, including respiratory illnesses, and may be susceptible to infection by COVID-19.
- Researchers and trackers working for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, a conservation nonprofit in Rwanda, are taking special precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to the gorillas they study and protect in the wild.
- Economic turmoil from COVID-19, including loss of tourism revenue, could spell trouble for gorilla conservation.

Scientists call for independent review of dam project in orangutan habitat
- A controversial hydropower project being built in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan has been put on hold indefinitely over the coronavirus outbreak.
- Conservationists say this is the perfect time to carry out an independent scientific assessment of the project’s impacts on the environment, and in particular on the world’s rarest and most threatened great ape species.
- But the project developer has refused to do so, claiming other developments in the Batang Toru ecosystem of northern Sumatra also pose a threat yet haven’t been asked to cease operations pending a study.
- The $1.6 billion project is also at risk of not getting the funding it needs, thanks to studies and campaigns highlighting its potentially devastating environmental impact and virtual redundancy in a region that already has sufficient electricity.

To save Cross River gorillas, EU-funded program aims to empower communities
- The Cross River gorilla, which lives in the mountainous border area of Nigeria and Cameroon, is Africa’s most threatened ape, with a population estimated at fewer than 300 individuals.
- The European Union will provide 2 million euros ($2.19 million) over four years to help support programs aimed at protecting Cross River gorillas by supporting sustainable livelihoods for people living near gorilla habitat.
- The funding will support work led by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Nigeria National Park Service.
- It will allow existing WCS livelihood programs in Cross River state to be expanded to more areas and communities, aimed at preventing locals from deforesting the area in search of a livelihood.

Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
- A new study presents evidence of territoriality among western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo.
- Camera trap images revealed that groups avoided one another and also stayed away from the central area of each other’s home ranges — evidence that the species may be more territorial than previously thought.
- An estimated 80% of western lowland gorillas live outside of protected areas, where shrinking territory due to forest loss and habitat fragmentation is a big problem.
- This new information on their territoriality, combined with their shrinking habitat, means gorillas may experience increased competition for food as well as for the limited space.

Call for prosecution of Indonesian politician who kept baby orangutan as pet
- Conservationists are calling for a district chief in Indonesia to face charges after he was found to have kept a baby Tapanuli orangutan as a pet and later released it into the wild unsupervised.
- Local media began reporting about the critically endangered ape at Nikson Nababan’s house on Jan. 26; the next day, he instructed his staff to release it in secret, ahead of an inspection by conservation officials.
- Orangutans are protected species under Indonesian law, and keeping one as a pet is punishable by up to five years in prison; however, there have never been any prosecutions of perpetrators, who tend to be influential figures such as politicians and military officers.
- Wildlife experts have also condemned the unregulated release of the baby orangutan: on its own, they say, it’s likely to die, and if it encounters wild orangutans, it could pass on human diseases picked up from its months in captivity.

Camera traps confirm presence of lowland gorillas in central mainland Equatorial Guinea for first time in over a decade
- Images of wild western lowland gorillas have been captured by camera traps deep in the jungles of central mainland Equatorial Guinea, marking the first time that the region’s gorillas have been caught on film in more than a decade.
- Camera traps deployed by conservationists with the Bristol Zoological Society (BZS) and the University of West of England (UWE) took the photos in Monte Alén National Park, which is located in central Rio Muni, the mainland region of Equatorial Guinea. Local communities had reported gorilla sightings in the region, but conservationists hadn’t seen the animals for themselves until now.
- The photographs were taken in Monte Alén National Park and are significant because they confirm the gorillas’ continued existence despite heavy hunting pressure.

Burning and bullets: Forest fires push Bornean orangutans into harm’s way
- Last year, a female orangutan in Indonesian Borneo was rescued after leaving her burned habitat.
- Experts later found signs of a recent pregnancy and also injuries to the animal.
- Wildfires in Indonesian Borneo last year led to an increase in the number of human-orangutan conflicts and wildlife rescues.
- Conservationists have called for stronger efforts to end forest fires and protect orangutan habitats.

Dam that threatens orangutan habitat is ‘wholly unnecessary’: Report
- A controversial hydropower dam that threatens the only known habitat of the world’s rarest orangutan species is unnecessary from both climate and economic aspects, a new report says.
- The report, commissioned by a group campaigning against the Batang Toru dam in Indonesia but drawing on official government data, says the dam will do little to connect the few remaining isolated communities in the region to the grid.
- It also says the region’s power needs will be better met, and at lower cost, by a slate of other projects already in the works, including expansion of existing gas turbine plants.
- The report says the dam developer’s claims of an overall reduction in Indonesia’s CO2 emissions are “significantly overstated,” and that builder Sinohydro has a track record of faulty dam construction in other countries.

Indonesia forest fires push orangutans into starvation mode, study finds

JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction, a preliminary study has found. The fires, which in nearly all cases are started to clear land for plantations, such as oil palm, reduce the […]
Global consumer demands fuel the extinction crisis facing the world’s primates
- Alejandro Estrada of the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Paul A. Garber of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois-Urbana argue that human consumption patterns are driving primates to the brink of extinction.
- Commodity production, extraction, and consumption are taking a heavy toll on key primates habitats around the world.
- This post is a guest analysis. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
- Activists and academics have attempted to stop the construction of the Batang Toru hydropower plant in North Sumatra, which is currently being built in the sole known habitat of the Tapanuli Orangutan.
- Critics of the dam have faced defamation charges, visits from intelligence officers, abrupt termination from conservation jobs and warnings that they could lose the right to work in Indonesia. One prominent opponent of the dam died in suspicious circumstances in October.
- Activists in North Sumatra say they feel constantly under threat. Dam developer PT NSHE denies any efforts to silence or intimidate critics, saying the company is “always open to inputs and to collaborate with various stakeholders.”

Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
- A census of one of the two populations of mountain gorillas living in eastern Africa revealed an increase from 400 to at least 459 individuals, bringing the total count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas.
- Teams conducted the survey in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem straddling the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
- An earlier survey of the other population living in the Virunga Mountains of DRC, Uganda and Rwanda showed that gorilla numbers there are also on the rise.
- That led to a change in the subspecies status on the IUCN Red List from critically endangered to endangered.

Female gorillas recognize and respond to contagious disease
- An infectious skin disease causing bright red facial lesions affects how female gorillas decide to change social groups, researchers have shown.
- Decade-long observations of nearly 600 gorillas in the Republic of the Congo revealed females are more likely to leave groups with severely diseased females or an infected silverback male.
- By reducing contact with sick individuals, females can decrease the risk of being contaminated and prevent further spread of the infection in the population.

Eight species, including Tapanuli orangutan, make first appearance on list of most endangered primates
- “Primates In Peril: The world’s 25 most endangered primates 2018-2020” is the tenth iteration of a report issued every two years documenting the primate species from across the globe that are facing the most severe threats of extinction.
- The report finds that the Tapanuli orangutan is one of the world’s most imperiled primates largely due to the impacts of human activities, and that it is hardly alone in that respect: Nearly 70 percent of the 704 known primate species and subspecies in the world are considered threatened; more than 40 percent are listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered.
- Many species are, like the Tapanuli orangutan, down to just a few hundred individuals or less. The Skywalker hoolock gibbon, for instance, was only elevated to full species status by scientists in 2017 and makes it first appearance on the list of the 25 most endangered primates this year because there are less than 150 left in the wild.

Gravely injured orangutan rescued near site of controversial hydropower project
- A severely injured and malnourished Tapanuli orangutan has been rescued from a plantation near the site of a controversial hydropower project in Sumatra.
- The animal was found to have deep, infected gashes on its head and under its arm, which rescuers say were likely inflicted by humans.
- The orangutan may have been fleeing forest-clearing activity near the project site, which is located in the Batang Toru forest, the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- This is not the first instance of orangutans apparently being driven out of their habitat by the project, which environmental activists and scientists say must be put on hold to protect the rarest great ape species in the world.

In Nigeria, a highway threatens community and conservation interests
- Activists and affected communities in Nigeria’s Cross River state continue to protest plans to build a major highway cutting through farmland and forest that’s home to threatened species such as the Cross River gorilla.
- The federal government ordered a slew of measures to minimize the impact of the project, but two years later it remains unclear whether the developers have complied, even as they resume work.
- Environmentalists warn of a “Pandora’s box” of problems ushered in by the construction of the highway, including illegal deforestation, poaching, land grabs, micro-climate change, erosion, biodiversity loss and encroachment into protected areas.
- They’ve called on the state government to pursue alternatives to the new highway, including investing in upgrading existing road networks.

Inside an ambitious project to rewild trafficked bonobos in the Congo Basin
- A decade ago, a troop of formerly captive bonobos was for the first time reintroduced to the wild in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Following that successful reintroduction, a new troop of 14 bonobos is now in the process of being released and is anticipated to be fully in the wild by September.
- Congolese conservation group Amis des Bonobos du Congo (ABC) is working to make sure the communities surrounding the release site feel invested in the project.

In a first, chimps found bashing tortoises against trees to get at the meat
- For the first time, researchers have observed chimpanzees in Gabon vigorously smashing forest hinge-back tortoises against tree trunks to try and crack open their shells and extract meat out of them.
- It was usually adult male chimps that were successful at cracking open tortoise shells. One female and two adolescents were seen trying too, but they were unsuccessful, following which an adult male finished the job, sharing the meat with them.
- In an unexpected observation, a adult male chimp cracked open a tortoise, ate half of its meat, then stored the remainder in a tree fork. He came back for it the next day, suggesting that chimpanzees plan for the future.

What is magic without ape parts? Inside the illicit trade devastating Nigeria’s apes
- Beliefs regarding the spiritual powers of apes drive a thriving trade in ape body parts in Nigeria and beyond.
- In many cultures within Nigeria, chimpanzee and gorilla parts are believed to provide protection from evil spirits and curses, or allow communication with ancestors.
- Due to a lack of data, the trade in ape body parts is sometimes viewed as simply a by-product of the much larger trade in bushmeat. Mongabay’s reporting suggests that the body part trade is, in its own right, a complex, well-organized and far more lucrative business.

Documentary on world’s rarest ape generates film festival buzz
- The first documentary ever made about the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s rarest and most threatened species of great apes, is racking up awards at film festivals around the world.
- U.K.-based filmmaker Matt Senior says his interest in the orangutan, which was only described as a new species in 2017, was piqued by a Mongabay article.
- Only 800 of the apes are believed to exist in the Batang Toru forest in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Their habitat is under threat from a massive Chinese-funded hydropower project being built in the area.
- Matt says he hopes the documentary will raise public awareness about this newest species of orangutan and the very real threats pushing it toward extinction.

Bauxite mining and Chinese dam push Guinea’s chimpanzees to the brink
- Guinea is home to about half of the world’s critically endangered western chimpanzees.
- A bauxite mining boom is driving the chimpanzees from their habitats in Guinea’s Boké region. To compensate, two mining firms agreed in 2017 to fund the establishment of Moyen-Bafing National Park, home to an estimated 5,300 chimpanzees.
- The national park is itself threatened by a bauxite mine and a proposed hydroelectric dam — projects that could kill as many as 2,800 of the great apes.

Lift-off for thermal-imaging system to estimate wildlife populations
- A research team hailed a breakthrough in their imaging system’s ability to detect and identify orangutans in tropical rainforest.
- They now plan for computer algorithms to report back what a thermal camera has seen in real time.
- The researchers believe the system could also be used to spot poachers targeting rare species.

IUCN calls for moratorium on projects impacting rarest great ape species
- The IUCN has cited “ongoing and new threats” to the Tapanuli orangutan, found in a single forest ecosystem in northern Sumatra, to call for a suspension and reassessment of projects being undertaken within the ape’s habitat.
- With a population of no more than 800 individuals, the Tapanuli orangutan is the world’s rarest and most threatened great ape species.
- Roads through the Batang Toru ecosystem where it lives have fragmented the orangutan’s population.
- The most high-profile threat is a planned hydropower plant and dam in the ape’s habitat, which scientists and conservationists have increasingly called to be halted.

Audio: Tool-using, ground-nesting chimp culture discovered in DR Congo
- On today’s episode, we talk to primatologist Cleve Hicks, who recently led a research team that discovered a new tool-using chimp culture in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Hicks and team spent 12 years documenting the behaviors of a group of chimps in the Bili-Uéré region of northern DRC, and their findings include an entirely new chimpanzee tool kit featuring four different kinds of tools. The chimps also build ground nests, which is highly unusual for any group of chimps — but especially for chimps living around dangerous predators like lions and leopards.
- And the Eastern chimps’ novel use of tools and ground nesting aren’t even the most interesting behavioral quirks they displayed, Hicks says.

Widespread tool-using chimp culture discovered in Democratic Republic of Congo
- Researchers spent 12 years documenting the behaviors exhibited by a population of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) whose range extends across more than 50,000 square kilometers (over 19,300 square miles) of northern Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The paper published this month in the journal Folia Primatologica detailing the team’s findings includes a description of an entirely new chimpanzee tool kit featuring four different kinds of tools: a long ant probe, a short probe, a thin wand, and a digging stick.
- These tools are used to harvest five different food types, including a variety of driver and ponerine ant species as well as honey from the nests of ground-dwelling and arboreal bees. And they’re not the only evidence of unique behaviors discovered among this chimp population.

Bank of China to review funding of dam in orangutan habitat in Sumatra
- A major Chinese state-owned bank has promised to evaluate a hydropower project that it’s helping fund in Sumatra, following criticism that it threatens the world’s rarest great ape species with extinction.
- Bank of China said it was “committed to supporting environmental protection globally,” but stopped short of saying what actions it would take in its review of the Batang Toru hydropower project.
- The project site is located in a forest that’s the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a species only described last year. Conservationists estimate the population of the species at about 800.
- There has been a mixed response to BOC’s statement, with some conservationists welcoming it and others saying it rings hollow, while a senior Indonesian official has condemned foreign NGOs’ opposition to the project as a form of outside intervention.

Salt fiends: Search for sodium puts Rwanda’s gorillas in harm’s way
- A recent study has identified a craving for sodium as the likely reason that mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park raid eucalyptus plantations outside the park.
- Eucalyptus bark contains 100 times more sodium than the gorillas’ normal diet and accounts for up to two thirds of their total sodium intake.
- A proposed buffer zone of nutritionally unattractive plants could help deter gorillas from crop raiding, which is the primary cause of human-gorilla conflict in the area.

Activists fighting to save orangutan habitat from dam unfazed by legal setback
- An Indonesian court has ruled that construction of a hydroelectric dam in North Sumatra can proceed despite concerns it will harm the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- Conservationists plan to appeal, citing “irregularities” in the decision and saying important issues raised during the hearing were not taken into account.
- The loss of even one or two orangutans per year due to impacts from the hydroelectric project could lead to eventual extinction, experts say.

In Nigeria, hunters turn into guardians of the rarest gorilla on Earth
- The Cross River gorilla was thought to be extinct by the 1980s, even though people living and hunting in remote areas along the Nigeria-Cameroon border knew the apes were still present deep in the forest.
- After the ape was formally rediscovered in the late 1980s, conservation groups and the Nigerian government worked to protect its habitat.
- In one part of the Cross River gorilla landscape, the Mbe Mountains, traditional landowners organized themselves into a community conservation association, keeping the forest under their stewardship.
- The association faces ongoing challenges, but with the support of NGOs like the Wildlife Conservation Society, it works to protect gorillas while improving the livelihoods of local people.

In the Congo Basin, a road cuts through once-untouched ape wilderness
- The TRIDOM landscape, encompassing forests in Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo, is home to more than 40,000 great apes as well as Central Africa’s largest elephant population.
- TRIDOM is in the path of a planned road link between Cameroon and Congo. Associated projects include a hydropower dam.
- While the project’s environmental impact assessment estimated only 750 hectares (1,850 acres) of woodland would be cleared for the road, on-the-ground observation of work in progress indicates the impact will be much greater.
- In addition to the direct impact of forest clearing, conservationists fear the road will increase habitat fragmentation, facilitate hunting and mining, and encourage human migration into the area — something that is already happening.

For the famed chimps of Gombe, human encroachment takes a toll
- The chimpanzee population in Gombe National Park in Tanzania has declined significantly in recent years.
- Among other factors, loss of suitable habitats due to charcoal production and smallholder agriculture has contributed to this drop.
- The Jane Goodall Institute, domiciled in Gombe, is now working with the communities living near the park to address these issues.

Research into chimp health benefits human, ecosystem well-being too
- Decades of research at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park have identified two major threats facing the park’s chimpanzees: habitat loss and disease.
- The two factors are linked, with human incursions into chimpanzee habitat increasing the risk of exposure to disease.
- Given the close genetic relationship between chimps and humans, diseases can flow both ways.
- Established 15 years ago, the Gombe Ecosystem Health Project aims to improve the health of chimps, humans and the wider ecosystem in the Gombe area.

New Species of orangutan threatened from moment of its discovery
- In a November 2017 article, an international team of scientists described a new species of great ape: the Tapanuli orangutan.
- The announcement was based on years of researched that demonstrated the species exhibited genetic, physical and behavioral differences that distinguished it from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- Even as conservationists celebrated the description of a new species, they raised an alarm about the dangers facing the ape — notably, a hydropower dam planned for its sole remaining habitat.
- This is the second in a two-part series about the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan.

What does it take to discover a new great ape species?
- In a paper published November 2017, an international team of scientists described a new species of orangutan.
- The Tapanuli orangutan, the eighth known great ape, is distinct from its Sumatran and Bornean cousins in several key ways.
- The species is also highly threatened, with plans to develop a hydroelectric dam in its only known habitat raising alarm among conservationists.
- This is the first in a two-part series about the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan. Part Two will be published Feb. 20.

DRC’s Virunga to welcome visitors again after 8-month closure
- Escalating violence in mid-2018, resulting in the deaths of seven park rangers, forced the closure of Virunga National Park to visitors.
- The park is known for its diverse wildlife, especially its mountain gorillas, as well as its active volcano, but its location in eastern DRC is one of the most volatile regions on earth.
- After assessing the security of the park, officials will reopen stable areas for visitors on Feb. 15 interested in trekking to see the gorillas and to visit the rim of the volcano.

Tool innovation shows cultural evolution at work among chimpanzees
- Chimpanzees in the wild have long been known to use a balled-up wad of leaves as a sponge to soak up water to drink.
- In 2011, researchers in Uganda observed chimps using a fistful of moss instead of leaves — and noted that the practice of “moss-sponging” was spreading throughout the chimp community.
- The sudden emergence and then rapid spread of this new tool leads researchers to believe that chimpanzees are capable of cultural evolution.
- Deforestation and hunting threaten chimpanzees with extinction, and may make it more difficult for cultural innovations to spread.

Indonesia rescues captive orangutans, but leaves their owners untouched
- Authorities in Indonesia have confiscated two juvenile Sumatran orangutans, a critically endangered species, being kept as pets.
- Possession of an orangutan is punishable by up to five years in prison in Indonesia, but authorities have never prosecuted any pet owners, who tend to be powerful and influential figures, and instead go after the poachers and traders.
- Conservationists say there need to be legal consequences for keeping orangutans as pets, in order to discourage the illegal trade, which involves poachers killing mother apes to capture babies and juveniles.

Gorilla radio: Sending a conservation message in Nigeria
- The Cross River gorilla, the rarest great ape subspecies with only 300 individuals believed to survive in the wild, is found only in highland forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.
- A 2014 survey of people living near Cross River gorilla habitat found that while the majority understood that gorillas are endangered and killing them is illegal, few supported measures to protect the gorilla or its habitat.
- The Wildlife Conservation Society is working to build support for conservation via an educational and entertaining radio program called “My Gorilla My Community.”

Wildlife rangers in DRC park report waning motivation, job satisfaction
- Surveys of more than 60 rangers in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo cite poor salaries, few chances for advancement, and security concerns as reasons for their low satisfaction with their jobs.
- The authors of the study, published in the journal Oryx, believe that the rangers’ discontentment leads to waning motivation in protecting the park and its wildlife, which includes the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla.
- Improved conditions, in the form of better salaries, opportunities for promotion, and better support from the judicial and legal authorities, could translate into improved protections for the park, the researchers write.

To tackle great ape trafficking, follow the money, report says
- Critically endangered great apes in Africa and Asia are hunted to be sold as pets, for bushmeat, or for their body parts.
- A recent study of the financial aspect of the trade in great apes reveals a complex system of multi-layered supply chains, embedded corruption, and soaring profits for those at the very top of these illicit networks.
- Money connected to ape trafficking runs through the global financial system, often across multiple jurisdictions, opening a potential avenue for legal sanctions against traders.

Cellphones are still endangering gorillas, but recycling old ones can help
- The Congo Basin, key habitat for gorillas and chimpanzees, is rich in minerals such as coltan, gold and tin that are used in electronics.
- Mining is a major factor in the decline of species like the Grauer’s gorilla, which have lost habitat to the industry and are also hunted when forest is opened up for mining.
- Participating in cellphone recycling programs helps reduce the demand for mining in gorilla habitat.

For orangutans affected by El Niño, change unfolds over time
- A long-term study in Kutai National Park in Indonesian Borneo has shown how weather caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation cycle affects the behavior, habitat requirements, feeding ecology and birth intervals of the park’s orangutans.
- The study increases conservationists’ understanding of how orangutans survive in difficult and variable climatic conditions — important information given the likely impact of climate change.
- Understanding the influence of the ENSO cycle was only possible through a multi-year study, highlighting the value of long-term projects. But the current trend is for short-term studies, which are often more appealing to funders and researchers.

Studying human behavior to protect orangutans: Q&A with Liana Chua
- Conservation efforts have traditionally focused too much on wildlife and not enough on human communities, says social anthropologist Liana Chua.
- When it comes to orangutans, Chua says indigenous communities in Borneo are unlikely to share the concerns and priorities of international conservation organizations. Killing of orangutans by humans is a major threat to the apes’ survival.
- Devoting real attention to the issues that are important to local people is key to developing better conservation policies, Chua says.
- Chua leads a project billed as “a novel anthropology-conservation collaboration” that aims to improve human-orangutan coexistence in Borneo.

Rapid population drop weakened the Grauer’s gorilla gene pool
- The loss of 80 percent of all Grauer’s, or eastern lowland, gorillas in the past two decades has led to a severe reduction in the subspecies’ genetic diversity, new research has found.
- That slide could make it more difficult for the fewer than 4,000 remaining Grauer’s gorillas to adapt to changes in their environment.
- Scientists look for signs of hope in the animal’s sister subspecies, the mountain gorilla, which, studies suggest, has adapted to its own low levels of genetic diversity.

Start them young: Uganda targets children for conservation awareness
- Uganda is home to a wide variety of primates, including chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. Deforestation, hunting and rapid population growth are among the threats facing the country’s wildlife.
- Aiming to inspire future generations to protect the country’s wildlife, Uganda has made conservation education part of its national curriculum.
- Conservation education centers, which give children first-hand introductions to chimpanzees and other wildlife, are a key part of the education effort.
- The Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Center in Entebbe is the country’s busiest, receiving more than 260,000 guests each year.

‘Conservation never ends’: 40 years in the kingdom of gorillas
- While studying Rwanda’s critically endangered mountain gorillas in the 1970s, newlywed graduate students Amy Vedder and Bill Weber learned that the government was considering converting gorilla habitat into a cattle ranch.
- At the time, conventional wisdom held that the mountain gorillas would inevitably go extinct. But Vedder and Weber believed the species could be saved, and proposed a then-revolutionary ecotourism scheme to the Rwandan government.
- Forty years later, that scheme has proved its worth. Mountain gorilla populations have rebounded, and tourism generates hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Vedder and Weber now work to inspire the next generation of conservationists both in Rwanda and abroad.
- In a series of interviews with Mongabay, Vedder and Weber reflect on a life in conservation.

Christmas ad conundrum: Is a palm oil boycott the way to save apes?
- British supermarket chain Iceland attempted to run a television advertisement highlighting the link between palm oil and the destruction of the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
- Deemed too political to air due to its links with campaigning group Greenpeace, the advertisement has been viewed online more than 70 million times, reigniting a debate on whether consumers should boycott products containing palm oil.
- Many wildlife NGOs argue that calling for a blanket ban on palm oil could do more harm than good. Instead, they urge concerned consumers to pressure the industry to clean up its practices.
- However, critics of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry’s leading standards council, say RSPO-certification has so far failed to stamp out deforestation and other harmful practices among member companies.

A Zambian sanctuary finds caring for chimps is a lifetime commitment
- Home to more than 130 apes, Zambia’s Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage is one of the world’s oldest and largest chimpanzee sanctuaries.
- Chimpanzees can live for 50 years or more, so each new animal the center takes in will require decades of care and financial support.
- With an ever-growing number of chimps in need of a home, simply financing daily operations is a challenge for this award-winning facility.

For Ugandan villagers, tradition and tourism help keep the peace with gorillas
- Uganda is home to around half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas; thanks to conservation efforts the global population is now slightly above 1,000 and the species has recently been re-graded by the IUCN as “endangered’ rather than “critically endangered.”
- Many indigenous groups in Uganda have traditional beliefs that encourage ape conservation. However, rapid population growth in the 20th century increasingly brought humans and gorillas into conflict.
- Today, conservation groups are working to harness traditional knowledge to protect apes, and to develop new techniques that allow humans and gorillas to peacefully coexist.

Plan to ship gorillas from DRC to Zimbabwe raises alarm
- The head of Zimbabwe’s wildlife authority says the agency plans to receive a donation of gorillas and okapis from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), part of a wildlife exchange program that recently saw 10 white rhinos sent to the DRC from Zimbabwe.
- The plan, officials say, is still being worked out. But the prospect has raised alarm over the welfare of the animals, the impact on the local ecosystem, and the possibility that animals from the DRC could be infected with Ebola.
- Zimbabwe has previously sold wild animals for display in China, leading some activists to fear the gorillas and okapis could ultimately end up in that country — an allegation Zimbabwean authorities strongly deny.

‘Not all hope is lost’ as outlook for mountain gorillas brightens
- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) changed the status of mountain gorillas from Critically Endangered to Endangered today.
- The new assessment cites the subspecies’ growing numbers, now at around 1,000 individuals, and the conservation efforts on its behalf.
- Scientists say that, while this is an important milestone, mountain gorillas’ survival depends on continued conservation.

Republic of Congo names new national park, home to gorillas, elephants
- The new Ogooué-Leketi National Park is the Republic of Congo’s fifth national park.
- It borders Batéké Plateau National Park in neighboring Gabon, and together the two parks form a transboundary protected area covering more than 5,500 square kilometers (2,120 square miles).
- The official designation of Ogooué-Leketi National Park comes after three logging concessions that overlapped with the proposed park area were finally closed down.
- All of the rights-holding communities that live close to the Ogooué-Leketi National Park were involved in the process of creating the protected area, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program.

Audio: A Half-Earth progress report from E.O. Wilson
- On this episode, a progress report on the Half-Earth Project direct from legendary conservation biologist E.O. Wilson.
- When Mongabay contributor Jeremy Hance spoke with Dr. Wilson back in January of 2017, Wilson said he’d found the goal of Half-Earth was energizing for people — and he tells us on this episode of the podcast that this continues to be true, as the conservation community has responded eagerly to the Half-Earth goal.
- Wilson also discusses why he sees Half-Earth as a “moonshot” and how close we currently are to protecting half of Earth’s lands and waters.

Researchers say orangutans are declining, despite Indonesian government’s claims
- Researchers say a recent Indonesian government report inaccurately claims that the orangutan population in the country is increasing, which could have significant implications for future conservation plans.
- The report, issued by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, states that the populations of 19 priority species, including orangutans, “increased by more than 10 percent” between 2015 and 2017.
- But, in a letter published in the journal Current Biology on Monday, researchers say that that assertion “is in strong contrast” to many recently published and peer-reviewed scientific studies on the status of the three orangutan species.

Citizen Ape: The fight for personhood for humans’ closest relatives
- The great ape personhood movement aims to extend legal personhood to apes, a distinction that recognizes these non-human animals as beings with the capacity to hold both rights and duties
- The movement has had several notable successes in advocating for changes to laws, and in individual court verdicts freeing apes from captivity in harsh conditions.
- Proponents hope that granting apes legal rights will also help bridge the gap between humans and non-human animals, along with the greater natural world.
- The great ape personhood movement draws on both modern philosophy and on indigenous traditions that recognize apes as creatures with complex societies and rich emotional lives.

Can social media save great apes?
- Bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees face a fight for survival, and social media offers a new tool to help people connect with these endangered great apes.
- Conservation groups say that, handled correctly, social media can help raise awareness — and funds.
- What’s good for social media isn’t always good for apes. Experts caution that posts featuring interactions between humans and animals or unusual animal behavior should be accompanied by explanations that put the images into context.

It’s déjà vu for orangutans, devastated by climate change and hunting once before
- The fossil record shows that orangutan numbers and range declined rapidly in the late Pleistocene area; by 12,000 years ago they remained in only around 20 percent of their original range.
- A recent study concludes that the twin pressures of climate change and human hunting were responsible for this rapid decline.
- The study’s authors say their research indicates that humans and orangutans have co-existed for millennia, and can continue to do so if proper conservation measures are taken.
- Their research suggests that far more attention needs to be paid to the impact human hunting has on modern orangutan populations.

Deforestation surges in Virunga National Park in the wake of violence
- In the DRC’s Virunga National Park, rangers and wildlife are caught in the crosshairs of a brutal civil conflict.
- Forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch detected more than 1,100 hectares (2,718 acres) of tree cover loss from May to September.
- The recent uptick coincides with the temporary closure of the Virunga after rebel forces killed a park ranger and kidnapped two British tourists.
- The primary driver deforestation is likely charcoal production. Illegal logging and land clearing for agriculture are also presumed to play a role.

Dam project pushes threatened orangutans from forest to farms
- Critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans are starting to flee from their only known habitat in Sumatra and encroaching on plantations, as the development of a controversial hydropower project in the Batang Toru forest gets underway.
- The finding comes just days after the project developer joined forces with the local government and a prominent university to speed up the pace of development ahead of the 2022 deadline.
- Indonesia’s environment ministry has ordered the developer to revise its environmental impact assessment, but conservationists say there are far too many problems with the project for it to continue.
- A key risk that remains unaddressed is the proposed dam’s location along a known fault line, which critics of the project say could have disastrous consequences in a region known for its high level of seismic activity.

Audio: How an African bat might help us prevent future Ebola outbreaks
- On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks.
- Our guest is Sarah Olson, an Associate Director of Wildlife Health for the Wildlife Conservation Society. With Ebola very much in the news lately due to a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Olson is here to tell us how research into hammer-headed fruit bats might help us figure out how Ebola is transmitted from animals to humans — and potentially control or prevent future outbreaks of the viral disease.
- The bats don’t contract the disease, but there is evidence that they carry the virus. Olson is part of a study in the Republic of the Congo that seeks to understand how the Ebola virus is transmitted from carriers like hammer-headed fruit bats to other wildlife and humans.

Ape sanctuaries in the DRC brace themselves as Ebola hits the country
- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s most recent Ebola outbreak, which has already claimed 105 human lives, is making great-ape conservation more challenging in an already volatile region.
- The disease can be transmitted between humans and apes, so conservation groups in the country need to take extra precautions to keep the animals in their sanctuaries safe.
- Most at risk is the GRACE gorilla sanctuary, situated four and a half hours from a city where Ebola has been confirmed.
- Researchers say the outbreak is not currently a significant threat to wild ape populations.

World Gorilla Day: good news and grave threats
- September 24 marks World Gorilla Day, when humanity celebrates one of its closest relatives.
- All species of gorillas are critically endangered, but that does not mean there’s no hope for these animals.
- New populations have recently been discovered, and programs to care for orphaned and injured ones are growing.

Recovering conservationist: Q&A with orangutan ecologist June Mary Rubis
- The rainforest in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is one of last remaining habitats of the nearly extinct Bornean orangutan.
- Orangutan conservation efforts have made the region a top priority for protecting the iconic species, but Malaysian conservationist June Mary Rubis says these efforts often sideline the indigenous peoples who live along with the great apes.
- Mongabay spoke with Rubis after she gave the keynote speech at the recent conference of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, in which she reflected on mainstream conservation narratives, politics, and power relations around orangutan conservation in Sarawak and elsewhere in Borneo.
- Rubis says she believes indigenous knowledge is crucial for the success of conservation and community development in orangutan landscapes.

Belt and Road Initiative could doom the world’s rarest ape (commentary)
- When Chinese President Xi Jinping extolls China’s Belt & Road Initiative, he uses words like “green”, “low carbon” and “sustainable”. Is this reality or just ‘greenwashing’?
- In Sumatra, Indonesia, a key element of the Belt & Road would greatly imperil the rarest species of great ape in the world.
- The Batang Toru hydro-project is shaping up as an acid test of the Belt & Road Initiative. Because if China and its Indonesian partners will press ahead with this project despite all the scientific evidence that it is a terrible idea, then how can we believe any of China’s promises about a “sustainable” Belt & Road?
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Orangutan found shot, hacked at palm plantation with history of deaths
- An orangutan previously captured from an oil palm plantation in Borneo and released into a nearby national park has been found dead inside the plantation, with extensive bullet and knife wounds.
- The killing is the third being investigated this year, and the fifth recorded at the plantation in question, run by a subsidiary of palm oil giant Best Agro Plantation, since September 2015.
- The company says it has made efforts to protect the wildlife entering its plantation, but declined to answer questions about the string of orangutan deaths.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Rwandan people and mountain gorillas face changing climate together
- The Critically Endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), has been brought back from extinction’s brink in Rwanda, with numbers in the Virunga Mountains around Volcanoes National Park estimated at 604 individuals in 2016, up from 480 in 2010. But long-time observers say climate change is bringing new survival challenges to the area.
- Longer and deeper droughts in recent years have caused serious water shortages, which impact both local farmers and the mountain gorillas. People now must often go deep into the park to find clean water, which increases the likelihood of contact with the great apes, which increases the likelihood for the transfer of human diseases to the animals.
- Hotter temps and dryer conditions could also pressure farmers to move into gorilla habitat in future, as they seek more productive cropland at higher altitudes. Also, as the climate changes, bamboo availability may be decreasing, depriving gorillas of a favorite food. This could force troops to forage outside the park in croplands, possibly leading to conflict.
- Forced changes in diet could impact gorilla nutrition, making the great apes more susceptible to disease. A major disease outbreak could be disastrous due to low population numbers. Scientists urge more research to understand how climate change affects human behavior, which then affects gorillas, and how the fate of the two primates intertwines.

Orangutan forest school in Indonesia takes on its first eight students
- A forest school in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, funded by the Vienna-based animal welfare organization Four Paws and run by the local organization Jejak Pulang, has just started training its first eight orangutan orphans to learn the skills they need to live independently in the forest.
- Borneo’s orangutans are in crisis, with more than 100,000 lost since 1999 through direct killings and loss of habitat, particularly to oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Security forces often confiscate juvenile orangutans under 7 years of age, and without their mothers to teach them the skills they need, they cannot be released back into the forest.
- Jejak Pulang’s team of 15 orangutan caretakers, a biologist, two veterinarians and the center’s director aim to prepare the orphaned orangutans for independence.

Latam Eco Review: Paddington Bear Captured on Camera in Peru

Among the top articles from our Spanish language service, Mongabay Latam, for the week of June 4 – 10 was one about a golden spectacled bear named after Paddington Bear that was caught by a camera trap for the first time in Peru. In other news, the debate on hydroelectric plants intensifies in Colombia, and […]
Primate-rich countries are becoming less hospitable places for monkeys, apes and lemurs
- New research shows that many of the 65 percent of the world’s primate species found in four countries — Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo — face the threat of extinction.
- The scientists involved in the study used maps of primate ranges and information on the threats they face to predict what might happen to the animals through the end of the 21st century.
- They found that increases in the amount of land turned over for human food production could cause the primate habitats to shrink substantially in these countries.
- However, the team also found that intensive conservation measures could dramatically reduce the loss of primate habitat by 2100 and potentially avert the mass extinction of these species.

Facebook video shows orangutan defending forest against bulldozer
- Dramatic footage released last week by an animal welfare group shows a wild orangutan trying in vain to fight off destruction of its rainforest home in Borneo.
- The video, filmed in 2013 but posted on Facebook on June 5th for World Environment Day by International Animal Rescue (IAR), was shot in Sungai Putri, a tract of forest in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province.
- Sungai Putri is one of the most important refuges for orangutans left in Indonesian Borneo. According to orangutan expert Erik Meijaard, Sungai Putri may be home to over 1,000 orangutans.

Audio: How soundscapes are helping us better understand animal behavior and landscape ecology
- On today’s episode, we take a look at soundscape phenology and the emerging role it’s playing in the study of animal behavior and landscape ecology.
- The Mongabay Newscast previously looked at how soundscapes are being used in phenological studies when we talked about the great Sandhill crane migration on the Platte River in the US state of Nebraska. Today, we take a deeper dive into soundscape phenology with researcher Anne Axel, a landscape ecologist and professor at Marshall University in the US state of West Virginia.
- Axel tells us all about this new field of study and plays a few of the recordings that have informed her research in this Field Notes segment.

East Africa’s mountain gorilla population now numbers more than 1,000
- According to the results of a census released last week, the mountain gorilla population in East Africa’s Virunga Mountains numbered 604 as of June 2016, up from from 480 in 2010. The population hit an all-time low of 242 individuals in 1981.
- The mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is a subspecies of the eastern gorilla with two distinct sub-populations: one in the Virunga Mountains and another in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. A census conducted in 2011 found approximately 400 gorillas living in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, meaning that the total number of mountain gorillas is now believed to be more than 1,000 individuals.
- Conservationists were quick to celebrate the increasing mountain gorilla population as a much-needed instance of good news, even if they remain wary of the many persistent and looming threats the subspecies must still contend with.

TV host Ellen DeGeneres to visit Rwanda in mountain gorilla conservation effort
- Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres earlier this year established a fund that will finance the building of a campus in Rwanda to support conservation and protection efforts for the critically endangered mountain gorilla.
- The campus is being built in collaboration with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and DeGeneres is scheduled to visit the site in the Virunga Mountains next week.
- The initiative has been welcomed by conservationists and Rwandan government officials, and has received financial support and endorsements from prominent figures in Hollywood.

‘Rarest’ ape’s path to survival blocked by roads, dams and agriculture
- According to a new study, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of only seven species of non-human great ape alive today, faces serious threats to its survival as infrastructure development and agriculture threaten more than one-quarter of its habitat.
- In November, a team of scientists reported that a new species of orangutan living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was distinct from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- They believe that fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans survive.
- Conservationists and scientists warn that a proposed 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam could push the new species closer to extinction.

‘Rarest’ ape’s path to survival blocked by roads, dams and agriculture
- According to a new study, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of only seven species of non-human great ape alive today, faces serious threats to its survival as infrastructure development and agriculture threaten more than one-quarter of its habitat.
- In November, a team of scientists reported that a new species of orangutan living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was distinct from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- They believe that fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans survive.
- Conservationists and scientists warn that a proposed 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam could push the new species closer to extinction.

Rubber plantation in Cameroon edges closer to UNESCO World Heritage Site
- Satellite data indicate the rubber plantation, operated by China-owned Sud Cameroun Hévéa (Sudcam), is currently less than one kilometer away from intact primary forest habitat. Development is ongoing amidst concerns about threats to endangered species within and outside the park, as well as alleged violations of community land rights and political affiliations with the Cameroonian government.
- The expansion of this rubber plantation is “by far the most devastating new clearing of forest for industrial agriculture in the Congo Basin,” according to Greenpeace.
- Rubber expansion also stands to affect the 9,500 people who live in villages on the reserve’s periphery. According to Greenpeace Africa, Sudcam did not obtain Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) from these communities before acquiring the land and residents have claimed that subsistence farmland has been taken away with little or no compensation.
- Members of the conservation community say that in order for rubber development to happen sustainably in Cameroon, companies need to collaborate with conservation NGOs to create robust buffers around wetlands and streams, develop wildlife corridors, establish areas to filter the runoff of toxins and sediment, and create bushmeat alternatives. They also recommend regulatory actions be taken in the U.S. and EU, which are major buyers of rubber.

Activists eye bigger roles for local officials, businesses in Indonesia’s orangutan protection plan
- The Indonesian government is drafting another 10-year guideline for orangutan conservation that aims to staunch the decline in the population of the critically endangered great ape.
- This time around, orangutan experts want the federal government to lay out clearer guidelines for conservation roles to be played by local authorities and companies working in orangutan habitats.
- Local authorities and companies are seen as key to protecting the animals’ increasingly fragmented habitat, but tend to favor short-term development and business plans that don’t serve long-term conservation goals.

Orangutan culture in focus in ‘Person of the Forest’: Q&A with researchers Cheryl Knott and Robert Rodriguez Suro
- A recent documentary, “Person of the Forest,” investigates the cultures of orangutans.
- Orangutan numbers have dwindled as a result of habitat loss, hunting and the pet trade.
- Scientists argue that the existence of orangutan culture makes protecting them even more critical.
- The film is a finalist at the New York WILD Film Festival, which began on Feb. 22.

Four Indonesian farmers charged in killing of orangutan that was shot 130 times
- Police in Indonesia have arrested four farmers for allegedly shooting a Bornean orangutan whose body was found riddled with 130 air gun pellets.
- The suspects claimed to have killed the animal because it had encroached onto their pineapple farm and ruined the crop.
- The killing was the second such case reported this year in Indonesia, where orangutans are ostensibly protected under the conservation act. But lax enforcement means few perpetrators ever face justice for killing or trading in these great apes.

What is happening to the orangutans of Borneo?
- A new study calculates that the island of Borneo lost nearly 150,000 orangutans in the period between 1999 and 2015, largely as a result of deforestation and killing. There were an estimated 104,700 of the critically endangered apes left as of 2012.
- The study also warns that another 45,000 orangutans are doomed by 2050 under the business-as-usual scenario, where forests are cleared for logging, palm oil, mining and pulpwood leases. Orangutans are also disappearing from intact forests, most likely being killed, the researchers say.
- The researchers have called for more effective partnerships between governments, industries and local communities to ensure the Bornean orangutan’s survival. Public education and awareness will also be key.

Orangutan shot 130 times in Indonesia, in second killing reported this year
- A second Bornean orangutan has been killed in Indonesia this year after being shot multiple times with an air gun.
- An autopsy revealed 130 pellets in the animal’s body, most of them in its head. Authorities managed to recover 48 of them.
- Wildlife conservation activists have called on the authorities to launch an investigation into the killing of the critically endangered ape.

Indonesian rubber farmers charged in gruesome killing of Bornean orangutan
- Police in Indonesia have arrested two rubber farmers for allegedly shooting and beheading a Bornean orangutan whose body was discovered last month in a river.
- The suspects claimed they killed the animal in self-defense, saying it attacked them after encroaching on their farm.
- Wildlife conservation activists have lauded the police’s determination to catch the perpetrators and have called on the courts to be just as strict in trying them.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Decapitated orangutan found near palm plantations shot 17 times, autopsy finds
- Indonesian authorities have found 17 air gun pellets in the headless body of an orangutan found floating in a river in Borneo’s Central Kalimantan province earlier this week.
- The body was found in an area close to five plantations, whose operators the government plans to question about the killing of the protected species.
- Orangutans are often killed in human-animal conflicts, and wildlife activists have slammed the authorities for not doing enough to prosecute such cases.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Orangutan found tortured and decapitated prompts Indonesia probe
- The discovery of a headless orangutan body bearing signs of extensive physical abuse has prompted an investigation by authorities in Central Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo.
- Authorities, however, have drawn criticism for hastily burying the body before carrying out a necropsy, which could have helped determine the cause of death and aided in the investigation.
- Orangutans face a range of threats in the wild, including loss of habitat as their forests are razed for plantations and mines, and hunting for the illegal pet trade.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Photos: Top 20 new species of 2017
- There’s still so much we don’t know about life on planet Earth that scientists discover new species with whom we share this planet nearly every day.
- For instance, this year scientists described a new species of orangutan in Sumatra — just the eighth great ape species known to exist on planet Earth. And that’s just one of many notable, bizarre, or downright fascinating discoveries made this year.
- Here, in no particular order, we present the top 20 new species discovered in 2017.

Roads, dams and railways: Ten infrastructure stories from Southeast Asia in 2017
- Southeast Asia is one of the epicenters of a global “tsunami” of infrastructure development.
- As the countries in the region work to elevate their economic standing, concerns from scientists and NGOs highlight the potential pitfalls in the form of environmental degradation and destruction that roads, dams and other infrastructure can bring in tow.
- Mongabay had reporters covering the region in 2017. Here are 10 of their stories.

Audio: Amazon tribe’s traditional medicine encyclopedia gets an update, and conservation effectiveness in Madagascar examined
- On today’s episode, we’ll get an update on an ambitious effort to document traditional indigenous healing and medicinal practices in the Amazon and speak with the reporter behind Mongabay’s popular new series on conservation efforts in Madagascar.
- Our first guest on today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast is Christopher Herndon, who, as co-founder and president of the group Acaté Amazon Conservation, has supported the Matsés people in planting healing gardens, which are basically living pharmacies as well as classrooms, and to document their traditional healing and plant knowledge in an encyclopedia.
- Our second guest is Mongabay contributor Rowan Moore Gerety, the writer behind our recent series on the effectiveness of conservation interventions in Madagascar.

New study: Gorillas fare better in logged forests than chimps
- A study in the northern Republic of Congo found that gorillas and chimpanzees both became scarcer at the onset of logging.
- However, gorillas move backed into logged areas more readily, while chimpanzees were more likely to stay away.
- The researchers believe that gorillas are better able to cope with logging because they’re not as territorial as chimps and they seem to be more flexible in their eating habits.

The world’s newest great ape, revealed a month ago, is already nearly extinct: IUCN
- This week, the world’s newest great ape Tapanuli orangutan was officially categorized as “Critically Endangered” by the IUCN as the species lost over 80 percent of its global population over generations due to habitat loss.
- The classification of the orangutan came in conjunction with the conservation union releasing its latest Red List of “Threatened” Species which added thousands of animal and plant species.
- The list is a mixed bag of good and bad news for conservation.

Orangutans process plants into medicine, study finds
- Scientists have observed Bornean orangutans chewing on the leaves of the Dracaena cantleyi plant, producing a soapy lather they then spread onto their skin.
- A new study finds D. cantleyi has anti-inflammatory properties, suggesting the orangutans are using it to self-medicate.
- Indigenous communities also use D. cantleyi as a pain reliever.
- The researchers say their study provides the first scientific evidence of deliberate, external self-medication in great apes.

Forced out or killed: rare chimps go missing from Cameroon mountain forest
- The Endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) is the least numerous subspecies of chimpanzee, with a total population almost certainly less than 9,000, and probably less than 6,000 individuals.
- The estimated population is far smaller in Cameroon, where just four known populations number some 250 individuals, all located in the Northwest region.
- One of those groups, known as “The Great Apes of Tubah” was until recently found in the unprotected Kejom-Keku Mountain Forest.
- But the chimps haven’t been seen in three years, and conservationists fear they’ve been killed or forced to move on. A new road into the Kejom-Keku area has resulted in the loss of half its forest, as herders, farmers, loggers and poachers move in.

New carbon maps of Sabah’s forests guide conservation in Borneo
- Airborne LiDAR mapping combined with satellite imagery analysis has provided scientists, government agencies and NGOs with a “wall-to-wall” account of the carbon held in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo.
- The study, led by ecologists from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, revealed that more than 40 percent of the forests with the highest carbon stocks aren’t covered by the state’s most stringent protections.
- The findings give wildlife biologists the chance to examine how carbon stocks correlate with the presence of biodiversity; NGOs the opportunity to identify new high-carbon areas to set aside under oil palm certification schemes; and the Sabah government the information to determine which forests are the most valuable and therefore need further protections.

Here is the most current list of the world’s top 25 most endangered primates
- According to the biennial Primates In Peril report, the latest installment of which was released today at the Primate Society of Great Britain’s 50th anniversary conference in London, 62 percent of the more than 700 known species and subspecies of apes, lemurs, monkeys, and other primates are currently facing serious threats to their survival. Forty-two percent of them are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered.
- The report lists the top 25 most endangered primate species, and while the list was compiled before the Batang Toru orangutan was described to science, the authors of the report said it would almost certainly appear on the list next year.
- The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), the Batang Toru orangutan’s closest relative, makes its first-ever appearance on the list, however. Eight other species from Asia join the Bornean orangutan on the list, as do five species from the Neotropics, five species from Africa, and six lemurs from Madagascar.

Jane Goodall interview: ‘The most important thing is sharing good news’
- Celebrated conservationist and Mongabay advisor Jane Goodall spoke with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler for the podcast just before departing for her latest speaking tour (she travels 300 days a year raising conservation awareness). Here we supply the full transcript.
- This wide-ranging conversation begins with reaction to the science community’s recent acceptance of her six decade contention that animals are individuals with personalities, and moves on to discuss trends in conservation, and she then provides an update on the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI)’s global projects.
- She also challenges trophy hunting as an effective tool for funding conservation (“It’s rubbish,” she says), shares her positive view of China’s quickly growing environmental movement, talks about the key role of technology in conservation, and discusses a range of good news, which she states is always so important to share.
- Amazingly, Dr. Goodall reports that JGI’s youth program Roots & Shoots now has perhaps as many as 150,000 chapters worldwide, making it probably the largest conservation movement in the world, with many millions having been part of the program. An effort is now underway to document them all.

Audio: Dr. Jane Goodall on being proven right about animals having personalities, plus updates direct from COP23
- On today’s episode, we speak with the legendary Jane Goodall, who truly needs no introduction, and will have a direct report from the United Nations’ climate talks happening now in Bonn, Germany.
- Just before Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler was scheduled to speak with Goodall recently, research came out that vindicated her contention, which she’s held for nearly 60 years, that animals have personalities just like people. So we decided to record her thoughts about that for the Mongabay Newscast.
- Our second guest today is Mongabay contributor and Wake Forest University journalism professor Justin Catanoso, who appears on the podcast direct from COP23 to tell us how the UN climate talks are going in Bonn, Germany, what the mood is like amongst delegates, and how the US delegation is factoring into the talks as the Trump Administration continues to pursue a pullout from the Paris Climate Agreement.

More big mammals found in high-carbon forests, says new study
- The researchers used satellite data to measure forest carbon values and camera trap photographs to tally the mammal species present in forests and oil palm plantations.
- Finer-scale data did reveal that high-carbon areas do support more species of medium and large mammals that are threatened with extinction.
- Experts say that this research validates the high carbon stock approach for identifying priority areas for conservation.
- Still, further research is required to better understand the role of connectivity between high-carbon forests in supporting biodiversity.

Indonesia races against time to save new orangutan species
- With an estimated population of less than 800, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan is already at risk of extinction due to habitat destruction and fragmentation.
- The Indonesian government will come up with a strategy to protect the orangutan, including the establishment of protected forest areas and wildlife sanctuaries.
- The government will also review a plan to build a hydroelectric plant in an area with the highest known density of Tapanuli orangutans.

A new species of orangutan from Indonesia (analysis)
- Scientists have described a third species of orangutan.
- The Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) is found in the Tapanuli region of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province.
- The species is already considered at risk of extinction.
- This guest post is an analysis by researchers, including authors of the paper that describes the new primate species.

The Eighth Great Ape: New orangutan species discovered in Sumatra
- A study indicates what was once assumed to be an isolated population of the Sumatran orangutan is in fact a distinct species.
- The Batang Toru orangutan differs from the Sumatran orangutan in morphology, behavior and genetics. Genomic analysis suggests it diverged from other orangutan species 3.4 million years ago.
- There are fewer than 800 Batang Toru orangutans in existence, making it the rarest of all the great apes.
- It is highly threatened by habitat loss. The study says a hydropower plant planned for the area could affect 8 percent of the species’ remaining forest habitat.

As Grauer’s gorillas cling to survival, new population found
- Since 1994, civil war has left over 5 million people dead and wildlife decimated in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Today, heavily armed militia and illegal miners prospect for “conflict minerals” needed for modern electronic devices made and sold in the U.S. and around the globe.
- Hunters have targeted Grauer’s gorillas to feed miners and militias: in just two decades, these great apes have declined by 77 percent. A 2016 survey found only 3,800 Grauer’s gorillas, the world’s largest primates, still hanging on in the most rugged parts of eastern DRC.
- The good news: a bold group of scientists, under the protection of armed rangers, has found 50 previously uncounted Grauer’s gorillas in DRC’s Maiko National Park. And more may exist within the 4,000 square-mile park.
- The bad news: the US House of Representatives voted last month to defund the “Conflict Mineral Rule,” which required US companies to report where conflict minerals, such as coltan used in cell phones and computers, were sourced. The Senate has yet to take action on the legislation.

Liberian park protects Critically Endangered western chimpanzees
- The establishment of Grebo-Krahn National Park in southeastern Liberia was approved by the country’s legislature in August 2017.
- The 961-square-kilometer (371-square-mile) park is home to an estimated 300 western chimpanzees.
- There are about 35,000 Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) left in the wild, and Liberia is home to 7,000 of them.

80% of Bornean orangutans live outside protected areas
- The finding is part of a new report led by the Indonesian government.
- The study confirms that orangutan populations have plunged over the past decade.
- It recommends several strategies for protecting the primates, including working with plantation companies to preserve forests within lands they have been licensed to develop.

Mammal numbers high in logged tropical forests, study finds
- The study quantified mammal numbers in forests and landscapes with varying degrees of human impact in Malaysian Borneo.
- Across 57 mammal species recorded with live and camera traps, the average number of all animals combined was 28 percent higher in logged forests — where hunting wasn’t an issue — compared to old-growth forests.
- The findings demonstrate the importance of conserving degraded forests along with more pristine areas.

Audio: Katharine Hayhoe on how to talk about climate change: ‘Share from the heart and then the head’
- Our first guest on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast is atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, who teamed up last year with her local PBS station, KTTZ, to write and produce a web series called “Global Weirding.”
- We check in with Hayhoe as she’s in the midst of shooting the second season of Global Weirding in order to get a sense of what to expect from the new episodes of the show and how Hayhoe views the overall political landscape around climate action today.
- Our second guest is Branko Hilje Rodriguez, a PhD student in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Alberta, Canada who studies the soundscapes of different successional stages of the tropical dry forest in Costa Rica’s Santa Rosa National Park, the largest remaining remnant of tropical dry forest in Mesoamerica.
- In this Field Note segment, Hilje Rodriguez plays for us a number of the recordings he’s made in the park, allowing us to hear the sounds of the dry forest during different stages of regrowth and different seasons, as well as some of the iconic bird species that call the dry forest home.

Western Chimpanzee numbers declined by more than 80 percent over the past quarter century
- Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent.
- The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list.
- In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies’ status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

Orangutans find home in degraded forests
- The study leveraged three years of orangutan observation in the field and airborne mapping of the forest structure using laser-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology.
- The research team found that orangutans make use of habitats that have been ‘degraded’ by logging and other human uses.
- The research is part of a larger effort in collaboration with the Sabah Forestry Department to map carbon stocks and plant and animal biodiversity throughout the Malaysian state of Sabah with the goal of identifying new areas for conservation.

On the front lines of conservation: How do rural women feel?
- Researchers interviewed women living inside a national park in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau about how the park affects their daily lives.
- The women felt the park was the cause of malnutrition because chimpanzees and baboons in particular damaged their crops and they did not receive compensation.
- Although reluctant to participate in conservation, they hoped the researchers could help provide compensation and improve their lives.

African great ape bushmeat crisis intensifies; few solutions in sight
- Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos are all Critically Endangered or Endangered, and continue to decline toward extinction due to habitat loss and degradation, disease, and illegal hunting.
- Great ape poaching, which supplies growing urban and rural bushmeat markets, is now at crisis levels across Central Africa, and despite conservationists’ efforts, is showing no sign of slowing down.
- Vast networks of logging roads, modern weapons, cell phones, cheap motorized transportation, and high demand for wild meat in urban centers is driving the booming bushmeat market.
- Africa’s great ape sanctuaries rescue some survivors, and active outreach to local communities offer a partial solution. Educational programs for children and adults, teaching the value of great apes, are seen as essential.

Preserving orangutan culture an ingredient for successful conservation
- Scientists once thought that all animal behavior was instinctual, but now know that many animals — particularly social animals — are able to think and to learn, and to display culturally learned behaviors.
- Orangutans are one animal in which occurrences of culture have been fairly well proven, with orangutan groups at different study sites displaying variant behaviors that have neither environmental nor genetic origins, meaning they can only be cultural in nature.
- Among these cultural behaviors are basic tool making and use for food harvesting, purposeful vocalizations, and variations in nest building materials and methods. Scientists fear habitat loss and crashing populations could cause this cultural heritage to vanish.
- The loss of varied cultural behaviors could potentially make orangutans less adaptable to changes in their environment at a time when, under extreme pressure from human development, these great apes need all the resources they can muster.

Conservation lessons from the bonobos
- Lola ya Bonobo, the world’s first bonobo sanctuary, was founded in 1994 by Claudine Andre, who came to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at a young age, and who, after a chance meeting with a bonobo at the Kinshasa zoo, dedicated her life to the species. Today, Lola has been recognized worldwide as a model for primate rehabilitation.
- The sanctuary primarily credits “inclusive conservation” for its success, a process by which Lola not only cares for rescued DRC bonobos, but also for nearby human communities — supporting farms, schools and medical facilities. The communities in turn support Lola.
- The bonobos at the sanctuary — often traumatized after being rescued from the great ape trade — spend years in rehabilitation, being served by human foster mothers and other caring Lola staff. When deemed ready, bonobo troupes are returned to the wild Congo.

Cross River superhighway changes course in Nigeria
- The 260-kilometer (162-mile) highway is slated to have six lanes and would have run through the center of Cross River National Park as originally designed.
- The region is a biodiversity hotspot and home to forest elephants, drills, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees and Cross River gorillas.
- The proposal shifts the route to the west, out of the center of the national park, which garnered praise from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
- The route still appears to cut through forested areas and protected lands.

Women could be a key to great ape conservation in the Congo
- The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE), Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), and Coopera are all organizations working with women in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help advance great ape conservation through education, empowerment, healthcare and food security access.
- Some examples: BCI helps fund pilot micro-credit projects for women who want to launch business enterprises, including soap and garment making. GRACE employs women as surrogate mothers for newly orphaned gorillas during an initial 30-day quarantine period.
- GRACE also provides women and their families with bushmeat alternatives by teaching them to care for and breed alternative protein sources. Coopera helps provide alternative food sources through ECOLO-FEMMES, an organization that trains women in livestock breeding and agriculture to reduce great ape hunting in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- Coopera, working with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots, engages young rape victims in tree planting to provide food sources to wild chimpanzees. JGI’s women’s programs in Uganda and Tanzania keep girls in school through peer support, scholarship programs and sanitary supply access. Educated women have smaller families, reducing stress on the environment.

No safe forest left: 250 captive orphan chimps stuck in sanctuaries
- Cameroon currently has more than 250 rescued chimpanzees living in three chimp wildlife sanctuaries. Attempts to find forests into which to release them — safe from the bushmeat and pet trade, and not already occupied by other chimpanzee populations — have failed so far.
- The intensification of logging, mining and agribusiness, plus new roads into remote areas, along with a growing rural human population, are putting intense pressure on un-conserved forests as well as protected lands.
- Unless habitat loss, poaching and trafficking are controlled in Cameroon, reintroduction of captive chimpanzees may not be achievable. Some conservationists argue, however, that reintroduction of captive animals is needed to enhance genetic resilience in wild populations.
- If current rates of decline are not curbed, primatologists estimate that chimpanzees could be gone from Cameroon’s forests within 15 to 20 years.

Audio: Crystal Davis, director of Global Forest Watch, on conservation and Big Data
- Mongabay has partnered with Global Forest Watch (GFW) over the years, and GFW has even funded some of our coverage of global forest issues.
- Crystal Davis fills us in on how the GFW tool and dataset is being used to inform forest conservation initiatives right now, new features planned for the future, and her thoughts on the ways Big Data is changing how we approach conservation.
- We also speak with Francesca Cunninghame, the Mangrove Finch Project Leader for the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands, in our latest Field Notes segment.

Connectivity and coexistence key to orangutan survival on croplands
- Orangutans are in drastic decline, largely due to habitat loss. From 1973–2010, Borneo lost 39 percent of its forests; estimates say that another 37 percent of orangutan-suitable habitat will be converted to agricultural use there through 2025. Similarly, 60 percent of habitat suitable for Sumatran orangutans was lost between 1985 and 2007.
- If orangutans are to survive in the wild through the 21st century, researchers will need to discover ways in which the animals can be helped to coexist with humans within agricultural landscapes. Researchers are also looking for creative ways to provide connectivity between remaining forest patches to promote and preserve genetic resilience.
- Scientists Gail Campbell-Smith, Marc Ancrenaz and others have shown that orangutans can use croplands, including oil palm plantations, if humans work to prevent conflict. Noise deterrents, such as bamboo cannon guns, along with the education of farm laborers and agribusiness companies, are techniques helping to reduce animal-human conflicts.
- Researcher Marc Ancrenaz and colleagues provided orangutans and other arboreal wildlife with rope bridges over small rivers in Malaysia — a successful approach to providing connectivity. It took four years for orangutans to begin using the bridges, but now young orangutan males use the structures to disperse more widely.

Great apes in Asian circus-style shows on rise — so is trafficking
- Asian zoos, circuses and safari parks are mounting large-scale productions with costumed, dancing, roller-skating great apes. Investigations show that nearly all of these trained primates were not bred in captivity, but illegally traded out of Africa and Indonesia, with destinations in China, Thailand and other Asian countries.
- The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the illegal trade may have removed as many as 22,218 great apes from the wild between 2005-2011. An estimated 64 percent were chimpanzees, whereas 56 percent of great apes seized by authorities were thought to be orangutans.
- Wild young apes are traumatized by their capture, and many die along the supply chain, or with their final “owners” by whom they are frequently poorly treated. Young great apes trained in captivity become increasingly unmanageable as they age, and many are “retired” to tiny, solitary cages, or simply disappear.
- Trafficking arrests are rare. UNEP recorded just 27 arrests in Africa and Asia between 2005-2011, over which time more than 1,800 cases of illegally trafficked great apes were documented, with many more undetected. Solutions are in the works, but time is running out for the world’s great apes if they are to be conserved.

Illegal bushmeat trade threatens human health and great apes
- Hunting for bushmeat impacts over 500 wild species in Africa, but is particularly harmful to great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos — whose small, endangered populations struggle to rebound from over-hunting. Along with other major stressors including habitat loss, trafficking and climate change.
- Bushmeat brings humans into close contact with wildlife, creating a prime path for the transmission of diseases like Ebola, as well as new emerging infectious diseases. Disease spread is especially worrisome between humans and closely related African great ape species.
- Bushmeat consumption today is driven by an upscale urban African market, by illegal logging that offers easy access to remote great ape habitat, plus impoverished rural hunters in need of cash livelihoods.
- If the bushmeat problem is to be solved, ineffective enforcement of hunting quotas and inadequate endangered species protections must be addressed. Cultural preferences for bushmeat must also change. Educational programs focused on bushmeat disease risk may be the best way to alter public perceptions.

Ebo forest great apes threatened by stalled Cameroon national park
- Cameroon’s Ebo forest is home to key populations of tool-wielding Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, along with an unspecified subspecies of gorilla, drills, Preuss’s Red Colobus, forest elephants, and a great deal more biodiversity.
- The forest is vulnerable, unprotected due to a drawn-out fight to secure its status as a national park. Logging and hunting threaten Ebo’s biodiversity. The Cameroonian palm oil company Azur recently began planting a 123,000 hectare plantation on its boundary.
- The Ebo Forest Research Project (EFRP) has been working successfully to change the habits of local people who have long subsisted on the forest’s natural resources — turning hunters into great ape guardians. But without the establishment of the national park and full legal protection and enforcement, everyone’s efforts may be in vain.

The military family that kept a pet orangutan in Indonesia
- Wildlife traffickers are chipping away at the dwindling populations of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans. Deforestation lends poachers an assist, rendering the primates homeless and easier to catch.
- Keeping an orangutan pet is illegal in Indonesia, but not once has a citizen been prosecuted for it. The owners tend to be influential figures — police officers, soldiers, politicians.
- Krismon was separated from his mother as an infant in the late 1990s. Only last year was he finally recovered from the military family he was living with.
- The ape will spend the rest of his life behind metal bars — unless a plan to construct an orangutan haven comes to fruition in North Sumatra.

Paying for healthcare with trees: win-win for orangutans and communities
- In 2016, the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) was declared Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Orangutan habitat is fast disappearing due to deforestation caused by industrial agriculture, forest fires, slash and burn agriculture, and logging.
- One of the most important remaining P. pygmaeus populations, with roughly 2,000 individuals, is in Indonesia’s Gunung Palung National Park. Alam Sehat Lestari (Healthy Nature Everlasting, or ASRI) is partnering with U.S. NGO Health in Harmony and effectively reducing illegal logging in the park via a unique healthcare offering.
- When communities were asked what was needed to stop them from logging conserved forest, the people answered: affordable healthcare and organic farming. Expensive medical costs were forcing people to log to pay medical bills, while unsustainable agricultural practices depleted the soil, necessitating the use of costly fertilizers.
- The two NGOs opened an affordable health clinic, and later a hospital, offering discounted medical service to communities that stop logging. Forest guardians, recruited in every village, encourage people to curb deforestation. They also monitor illegal activity and reforestation, while offering training in organic farming methods. And the program works!

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