World's Rarest Ape Damned To Extinction By Chinese-Funded Hydroelectric Dam

Nat Geo – The world’s rarest great ape, discovered only in 2017, will not survive the building of a $1.6 billion hydroelectric power plant and dam in the middle of its remaining habitat in Sumatra, Indonesia, wildlife experts warn.

Only 800 of the newly identified Tapanuli orangutans remain in the wild, all in northern Sumatra’s Batang Toru Forest. It’s one of the most biodiverse spots in Indonesia, home to such rare species as Sumatran tigers and the critically endangered Sunda pangolin.

In this same area, forest clearing has already begun for the hydro project, which is being financed and built by state-controlled Chinese companies under China’s Belt and Road. This multi-trillion-dollar initiative involves more than 7,000 infrastructure projects around the world.

It’s a sad sad day for the Tapanuli orangutans living in northern Sumatra’s Batang Toru Forest. I’d like to be on record from the get-go saying fuck the Chinese. I have no qualms with their food or their culture, but this one is going too far.

What does Sumatra need a $1.6 billon hydroelectric power plant for anyway? What the fuck is Sumatra? I know it’s a place but other than Sumatran orangutans and that weird sex book that teaches you how to incorporate yoga positions into the bedroom, what have they done for us lately? All I’m saying is these “state-controlled” Chinese companies building dams in countries nobody cares about need to get their heads out of their asses and realize they’re about to wipe out literally the rarest species of ape we’ve got left on the planet.

Scientists only discovered the Tapanuli orangutan a few years ago and it wasn’t until around a year ago scientists realized they’re not only their own species, but the Tapanuli orangutan has the oldest evolutionary lineage of all 3 known orangutan species and are actually more closely related to the Bornean orangutan, that lives in Borneo across the Java Sea, than the Sumatran orangutans they share a home with. How neat is that?

Hopefully Jane Goodall and her environmentalist friends get a whiff of this story and cape up like they just did for the grizzly bears in Wyoming, because it doesn’t sound like the Tapanuli orangutans have much time before they get turned into a delicious dish of General Tso’s chicken.