A Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time crossing a man-made canopy bridge constructed to help the endangered animals bypass a tarred road on the Indonesian island, an NGO said.<\/p>\n
Conservation group Tangguh Hutan Khatulistiwa, in partnership with the UK-based charity Sumatra Orangutan Society (SOS) and local authorities, built five canopy bridges in the north Sumatra province in 2024, after a road that serves as a lifeline for remote communities had been expanded, cutting through the rainforest.<\/p>\n
The first Sumatran orangutan has now been caught on camera using one of the hanging bridges, SOS said in a statement.<\/p>\n
While other species including gibbons and long-tailed macaques have also been spotted crossing there, “this is a world first for Sumatran orangutans”, it added.<\/p>\n
The bridge’s use by the orangutan was a “huge milestone for conservation”, SOS chief executive Helen Buckland said.<\/p>\n
“These canopy bridges demonstrate that human development and wildlife don’t have to be at odds. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the most effective,” she added.<\/p>\n
The road is an important social and economic link for communities in Sumatra’s Pakpak Bharat district.<\/p>\n
But it has also split a population of some 350 orangutans, SOS said.<\/p>\n
Erwin Alamsyah Siregar, executive director at Tangguh Hutan Khatulistiwa, said that habitat fragmentation was “one of the greatest challenges in contemporary conservation”.<\/p>\n
He said he hoped canopy bridges would become a “standard feature” of infrastructure planning across the region.<\/p>\n
The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies Sumatran orangutans, endemic to the island of Sumatra, as critically endangered.<\/p>\n
Their decline is blamed on habitat loss and fragmentation as well as illegal hunting.<\/p>\n
In the wild, orangutans are found only on Sumatra and the nearby island of Borneo, which is shared between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time crossing a man-made canopy bridge constructed to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-419657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}