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The historical range and drivers of decline of the Tapanuli orangutan

View ORCID ProfileErik Meijaard, Safwanah Ni’matullah, Rona Dennis, Julie Sherman, View ORCID ProfileOnrizal, Serge A. Wich
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.246058
Erik Meijaard
1Borneo Futures, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
2Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
3School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia
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  • For correspondence: emeijaard@gmail.com
Safwanah Ni’matullah
1Borneo Futures, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
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Rona Dennis
1Borneo Futures, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
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Julie Sherman
1Borneo Futures, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
4Wildlife Impact. Portland, Oregon, USA
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Onrizal
5University of Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia
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Serge A. Wich
6Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
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Abstract

The Tapanuli Orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) is the most threatened great ape species in the world. It is restricted to an area of about 1,000 km2 of upland forest where fewer than 800 animals survive in three declining subpopulations. Through a historical ecology approach involving analysis of newspaper, journals, books and museum records from the early 1800s to 2009, we demonstrate that historically Pongo tapanuliensis inhabited a much larger area, and across a much wider range of habitat types than now. Its current Extent of Occurrence is between 2.5% and 5.0% of the historical range in the 1890s and 1940s respectively. A combination of historical fragmentation of forest habitats, mostly for small-scale agriculture, and unsustainable hunting likely drove various populations to the south, east and west of the current population to extinction. This happened prior to the industrial-scale forest conversion that started in the 1970s. Our findings indicate how sensitive P. tapanuliensis is to the combined effects of habitat fragmentation and unsustainable take-off rates. Saving this species will require prevention of any further fragmentation and killings or other removal of animals from the remaining population. Without concerted action to achieve this, the remaining populations of P. tapanuliensis are doomed to become extinct within several orangutan generations.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • We added five historic records that we found and updated the figures accordingly. We also changed the text based on input from readers of earlier version of this preprint, and discussed the findings into IUCN's concept of restoring ecological functionality for species.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted December 16, 2020.
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The historical range and drivers of decline of the Tapanuli orangutan
Erik Meijaard, Safwanah Ni’matullah, Rona Dennis, Julie Sherman, Onrizal, Serge A. Wich
bioRxiv 2020.08.11.246058; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.246058
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The historical range and drivers of decline of the Tapanuli orangutan
Erik Meijaard, Safwanah Ni’matullah, Rona Dennis, Julie Sherman, Onrizal, Serge A. Wich
bioRxiv 2020.08.11.246058; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.246058

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