Will China Wipe Out the World’s Rarest Ape?

Will a desperately imperiled ape become a tragic icon of China’s trillion-dollar infrastructure-expansion plans—hundreds of mega-projects that will stretch across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Pacific?

The ape, called the Tapanuli Orangutan, is one of the rarest animals on Earth.

Its great vulnerability isn’t stopping Chinese corporations and banks from building a US$1.6 billion hydropower project right in the heart of its tiny population. 

The forest destruction has already begun.

To learn more about this environmental calamity — and why it is only the beginning of an avalanche of environmental crises that will be provoked by China — read this brief article. 

Published today by ALERT director Bill Laurance, it’s a story of ecological Armageddon for one of our closest living relatives.

And it explains exactly why we can’t trust China when it claims its massive development plans will be ‘green’ and safe for nature.

Ape images (c) Maxime Aliaga; forest-clearing image: Sumatran Orangutan Society