Leuser Nature School, Sumatra

2024: A Year of Hope for Sumatra’s Orangutans

As 2024 comes to a close, we pause to celebrate the remarkable progress made this year in achieving our mission to safeguard orangutans, their forests, and their future. This year, we've achieved some significant milestones. From supporting communities to secure rights to their ancestral lands to stitching together fragmented forests – these accomplishments show that we are on the right track to securing a brighter future for Sumatra’s orangutans and their rainforest home.

Protecting Orangutan Habitat

Orangutan conservation requires specialised skills to map habitats, survey populations, and develop effective conservation strategies. In 2024, we continued to invest in building the expertise of our frontline partners, ensuring they are equipped to deliver community-driven programmes. Supported by the Darwin Initiative, this capacity-building work includes upskilling in social forestry, community engagement, and operations.

Social forestry strengthens conservation by empowering communities to gain rights to manage ancestral lands. Navigating this complex process, our frontline partners helped forest-edge communities secure a ‘Village Forest’ – placing 600 hectares of critical habitat under community protection for 20 years.

In the Lae Ordi Corridor, an essential strip of forest linking key orangutan habitats, our frontline partners united clans to map ancestral lands and advance future conservation plans. Years of trust-building culminated in this milestone, paving the way for connected landscapes where orangutans can thrive, promoting resilience and a flourishing future for the species.

Discover how we and our partners connect orangutan landscapes in our interactive storymap.

Connecting Fragmented Forests

This year, we supported our frontline partners to install five canopy bridges across a major road in West Toba. These bridges help primates safely cross roads, reducing human-wildlife conflict and strengthening ecosystem health. Within weeks, langurs and macaques began using the bridges, and we expect orangutans to follow as they observe other species. Orangutan nests nearby show they are watching and waiting to trust this new route.

In exciting news, we partnered with TaHuKah to construct two additional bridges in the Batang Toru ecosystem, home to the critically threatened Tapanuli orangutan. With fewer than 800 individuals left in the wild, this step offers a lifeline for the species and brings us closer to a future where orangutans thrive in connected, resilient forests.

Rewilding Orangutan Landscapes

This year, our frontline partners OIC planted thousands of saplings in the Singkil Peat Swamp Forest and the Selamanya Hutan restoration site. The Selamanya Hutan restoration site, once a 320-hectare palm oil plantation, is transforming into thriving forest. In 2024, hidden cameras captured wildlife, including wild pigs, macaques, elephant and porcupines, returning to the area. These images inspire hope as this vital ecosystem recovers, and we look forward to what 2025 will bring.

TaHuKah also distributed nearly 11,000 durian, cinnamon, coffee, and mangosteen seeds to agroforestry farmers in North Sumatra, helping restore 73.5 hectares of land. This programme supports communities with sustainable food and income sources, reducing forest-clearing practices while enhancing biodiversity.

Looking Ahead: A Year of Progress and Promise

As we enter 2025, we do so with optimism and renewed determination. Recent successes, including raising over £15,000 via GlobalGiving this year, reflect the unwavering dedication of our supporters – thank you!

This year, we will evolve conservation in West Toba by supporting biodiversity and land use surveys of a contested corridor connecting vital forests. We also aim to secure 6,000 hectares of primary forest through social forestry, empowering communities to protect ecosystems while developing sustainable livelihoods.

Finally, through our Rewild Fund, we will expand rehabilitation efforts and launch a new rewilding site, bringing us closer to a future where people and nature thrive together.

None of this work would be possible without you – our dedicated and compassionate supporters. Your generosity fuels progress, empowers communities, and protects vital forests for orangutans and countless other species.

Together, we are creating lasting change and building a future where people and nature can flourish side by side. Thank you for being part of this journey with us!

Orangutans, with their soulful eyes and gentle nature, are beloved symbols of the rainforest. But did you know, orangutans play a vital role in keeping these precious ecosystems healthy and thriving.

As we celebrate International Orangutan Day, it’s important to understand just how crucial these incredible beings are to the world’s rainforests

Orangutans are the “Gardeners of the Forest”

Orangutans are known as the “gardeners of the forest.” They spend most of their lives in the trees, swinging from branch to branch, and their diet consists mainly of fruit. As they move through the forest, they eat a variety of fruits and later disperse the seeds far and wide through their droppings. This natural process helps to maintain the diversity of the forest, as seeds are spread across large areas, giving rise to new plants and trees.

Orangutans are “Ecosystem Engineers”

Orangutans shape the rainforest in ways that benefit thousands of other species. A diverse forest is more resilient to changes and threats, such as disease, climate change, and natural disasters. With many plant species growing together, the loss of one does not lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem. In this way, orangutans help maintain the delicate balance of life in the rainforest, supporting a web of interconnected species that rely on one another for survival.

Orangutans are a “Keystone Species”

The presence of orangutans is a sign of a healthy, functioning rainforest. They are a keystone species, meaning their presence has a disproportionate impact on the environment compared to other species. Healthy rainforests are crucial for the planet. They act as the Earth’s lungs, absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They also regulate the global climate, support the water cycle, and provide a home to countless species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. The health of these rainforests, and by extension our planet, is closely linked to the survival of orangutans.

This International Orangutan Day, we thank you for your donations which help ensure that wild orangutans remain a part of our world for generations to come. Together, we can make a difference.