RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 How widespread was the Tapanuli orangutan and what led to its decline?
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.08.11.246058
DO 10.1101/2020.08.11.246058
A1 Erik Meijaard
A1 Safwanah Ni’matullah
A1 Rona Dennis
A1 Julie Sherman
A1 Onrizal
A1 Serge A. Wich
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/08/26/2020.08.11.246058.abstract
AB 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 mostly hill forest where fewer than 800 animals survive in three declining subpopulations. Through a historical ecology approach involving analysis of colonial-era and other literature, we demonstrate that historically the Tapanuli orangutan lived in a much larger area, and across a much wider range of habitat types compared to now. Its current range is about 10-20% of the range it had some 150-200 years ago. A combination of historic 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 prior to the industrial-scale forest conversion that started in the 1970s. Our findings indicate how sensitive orangutans are to the combined effects of habitat fragmentation and unsustainable mortality or rescue and translocation rates. Saving this species will require prevention of any further fragmentation and any killings or other removal of animals from the remaining population. Without concerted action to achieve this, the remaining populations of Tapanuli orangutan are doomed to become extinct within several orangutan generations.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.