Conservationists have captured footage of a critically endangered Sumatran orangutan using a canopy bridge to cross a road in North Sumatra, Indonesia, for the first time. The bridge was installed in 2024 over the Lagan-Pagindar road in the Pakpak Bharat district, which had become a barrier for wildlife.
Environmental organisation Tangguh Hutan Khatulistiwa (TaHuKah) and the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS) built the bridge with local government support. For two years, camera traps monitored the bridge, capturing other species such as black giant squirrels, long-tailed macaques, and agile gibbons, but no orangutans until now.
The young male orangutan was seen edging onto the bridge, pausing halfway to look down at the road and at the camera, before proceeding into the Sikulaping protection forest. Helen Buckland, chief executive of SOS, described the team's reaction: 'You should have heard the cries of delight from the team. After two long years, it’s finally happened.'
The road had split the local orangutan population of around 350 individuals into two groups, one in the Siranggas wildlife reserve and the other in the Sikulaping protection forest. This fragmentation risked genetic bottlenecks and functional extinction due to inbreeding. Orangutans, the largest arboreal mammals, spend over 90% of their time in the forest canopy and are a keystone species.
There are only 14,000 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild, making them one of the world's most threatened apes. Franc Bernhard Tumanggor, head of the Pakpak Bharat district, said: 'Witnessing a Sumatran orangutan confidently crossing that bridge is living proof that we need not sever the forest’s lifeline in order to build our communities’ own. Modernisation does not have to mean destruction.'
