Four days of unrelenting rain and devastating landslides on Sumatra’s western coast resulted in the death of an estimated 58 Tapanuli orangutans, excluding other fatalities that may have been triggered by canopy damage and famine.
The figure, published in a recent edition of Current Biology, represents about 7 percent of the species’ less than 800 known individuals. It surpasses earlier lower‑range estimates and shows the real cost of extreme weather on the planet’s most vulnerable primates.
A month after the storm, humanitarian volunteers discovered a badly mangled orangutan carcass buried in mud at Pulo Pakkat village. Numerous trees were uprooted, and the removed forest floor left the ape largely exposed to the natural disaster’s forces.
Researchers believe that even the strongest individual is unable to survive large scale landslides that can sweep whole forest patches. The death toll indicates a profound threat to the remaining population, as continued decline at this rate could cause extinction by the end of the decade.
The study stresses that climate‑induced rainfall events are expected to increase in frequency, making sustained conservation funding, climate‑adapted habitat management and decisive international cooperation imperative to halt further losses.
