JAKARTA — In Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, conservation groups and authorities have built canopy bridges that stitch back together primate habitat, including for orangutans, that were fragmented by roads over the years. Road building has expanded throughout Pakpak Bharat district to connect communities living on the edges of the forest to schools, hospitals and other facilities. For the region’s wildlife, however, these roads have reduced connectivity between habitats, especially for tree-dwelling primates like the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii). Wildlife movements across habitats are essential to sustaining viable populations, according to ecological surveys by the Resilient Equatorial Forests Foundation (TaHuKah), an NGO based in Medan, the provincial capital, which started working in the area in 2022. “This [canopy bridges] project was born from a shared vision with the local authorities, recognizing that alongside essential development like road infrastructure, we must safeguard the movement of wildlife,” Erwin Alamsyah Siregar, executive director of TaHuKah, told Mongabay in an email. A team from the Resilient Equatorial Forests Foundation (TaHuKah) and Vertical Rescue Indonesia builds a canopy bridge for primate connectivity in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province. Image courtesy of TaHuKah. The foundation approached local public works authorities, forest management units, and communities to build artificial canopy bridges to stitch back together the landscapes fragmented by new and upgraded roads. TaHuKah also partnered with the conservation group Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS), which helped identify the fragmented, smaller populations of the great apes and viable ways to reconnect them based on data from the last…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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