BANGKOK: Indonesia’s deadly flooding was an “extinction-level disturbance” for the world’s rarest great ape, the tapanuli orangutan, causing catastrophic damage to its habitat and survival prospects, scientists warned on Friday.
Only scientifically classified as a species in 2017, tapanulis are incredibly rare, with fewer than 800 left in the wild, confined to a small range in part of Indonesia’s Sumatra.
One dead suspected tapanuli orangutan has already been found in the region, conservationists told AFP.
“The loss of even a single orangutan is a devastating blow to the survival of the species,” said Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder and chairman of the Orangutan Information Center in Indonesia.
And analysis of satellite imagery combined with knowledge of the tapanuli’s range suggests that the flooding which killed nearly 1,000 people last month may also have devastated wildlife in the Batang Toru region.
The scientists focused on the so-called West Block, the most densely populated of three known tapanuli habitats, and home to an estimated 581 tapanulis before the disaster.
There, “we think that between six and 11 percent of orangutans were likely killed,” said Erik Meijaard, a longtime orangutan conservationist.
“Any kind of adult mortality that exceeds one percent, you’re driving the species to extinction, irrespective of how big the population is at the start,” he told AFP.
But tapanulis have such a small population and range to begin with that they are especially vulnerable, he added.
Satellite imagery shows massive gashes in the mountainous landscape, some of which extend for more than a kilometer and are nearly 100 meters wide, Meijaard said.
The tide of mud, trees and water toppling down hillsides would have carried away everything in its path, including other wildlife like elephants.
David Gaveau, a remote sensing expert and founder of conservation start-up The Tree Map, said he was flabbergasted by the before-and-after comparison of the region.
“I have never seen anything like this before during my 20 years of monitoring deforestation in Indonesia with satellites,” he told AFP.
The devastation means remaining tapanulis will be even more vulnerable, with sources of food and shelter now washed away.
Over nine percent of the West Block habitat may have been destroyed, the group of scientists estimated.
In a draft paper shared with AFP and set to be published as a pre-print in coming days, they warned the flooding represents an “extinction-level disturbance” for tapanulis.
They are urging an immediate halt to development in the region that will damage remaining habitat, expanded protected areas, a detailed survey of the affected area and orangutan populations and work to restore lowland forests.
The highland homes currently inhabited by tapanulis are not their preferred habitat, but it is where remaining orangutans have been pushed by development elsewhere.
Panut said the region had become eerily quiet after the landslides.
“This fragile and sensitive habitat in West Block must be fully protected by halting all habitat-damaging development,” he told AFP.
Indonesia floods were ‘extinction level’ for rare orangutans
https://arab.news/2y8d2
Indonesia floods were ‘extinction level’ for rare orangutans
- One dead suspected tapanuli orangutan has already been found in the region
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
