The Tapanuli orangutan was classified as a separate species as recently as 2017, and there are estimated to be fewer than 800 left in the world. All of them live in a part of Sumatra in Indonesia, which was hit hard by torrential rains, floods and landslides in early December.
So far, only one dead monkey has been found, but analyses of satellite images of the West Block area, where over 580 monkeys lived before the storm, indicate that between six and eleven percent of the Tapanuli orangutans have died.
The loss of just one orangutan is a devastating blow to the survival of the species, says Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of the Indonesian Orangutan Information Center.
