Crossing Indonesian rope bridge a win in extinction fight
A Sumatran orangutan crosses a canopy bridge that stretches over a road in Pakpak Bharat, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Credit: AP/Sumatran Orangutan Society/TaHuKah
Exciting news on the extinction front emerged last week from Indonesia: An orangutan used a rope bridge strung high between trees by humans to cross above a public road.
You might think: Why should I care about an ape on the other side of the Earth? And, what's the big deal anyway?
That crossing was a milestone in the worldwide fight to preserve species from extinction, and an important marker in our inconsistent effort to mitigate the destructive impact we humans have on the rest of the natural world.
The backdrop is well known. We are in the midst of what some scientists call Earth's sixth mass extinction. We can quibble about the term but it is clear human development is devastating many plant and animal species by significantly changing their habitats. Reasonable estimates find species going extinct at a rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than if humans were not around. That's catastrophic. Species do not exist in vacuums. They are interconnected and interdependent in ways that help produce clean air, clean water, fertile soil and pollinated plants. Some species become sources of new medicines. Given all we know and don't know about the natural world, losing vast unexplored parts of it should scare us.
In Indonesia, a road through a forest divided about 350 wild Sumatran orangutans, one of three orangutan species, all critically endangered. Orangutans spend more than 90% of their life in trees, and the now-isolated Sumatran apes would not cross the road. Fragmentation leads to inbreeding, which can result in deformities, poor health — and eventual extinction. In the two years since the bridge and four others were built, they had been used by squirrels, macaques and gibbons, but the recent crossing was the first recorded use of a canopy bridge by an orangutan, the world's largest tree-dwelling mammal and a keystone species whose daily activities like seed dispersal and habitat maintenance help keep tropical rainforests healthy and diverse.
Local officials and conservationists were ecstatic, as they should be. But it's important to understand the tension at the heart of the story. The road connected remote villages to healthcare, schools and other government services and thus was deemed necessary for people. Hard to argue with that. But it was devastating for the orangutans.
One Indonesian official told The Guardian that the crossing "is living proof that we need not sever the forest's lifeline in order to build our communities' own. Modernization does not have to mean destruction."
Yet it often has. Much conservation work and nearly all anti-extinction efforts are essentially attempts to undo what humans have wrought. Many jurisdictions now have planning guidelines that weigh the need for development versus the harm done to creatures. Historically, humans have mattered more in these calculations. Implicit is the notion that we are the dominant species occupying a loftier perch on the evolutionary ladder. The argument contains more than a whiff of might makes right.
That's fine in a survival-of-the-fittest context, but it means we then must accept our fate if a more advanced form of life comes along — say, if rapidly developing artificial intelligence agents start redirecting energy supplies to suit their needs at the expense of humans.
Fortunately, good work is being done to slow extinctions. Canopy bridges dot the Amazon rainforest. Overpasses and underpasses re-connect habitats for wildlife in Canada’s Banff National Park and numerous locations across America including Long Island, where a tunnel for frogs was built under a road in Middle Island. In car-addled Southern California, a large wildlife crossing is slated to open in December to allow mountain lions to mate on either side of the 101 freeway, freshening gene pools and warding off extinction. Colorado recently built a spider crossing for tarantulas.
The work is ingenious. Maintaining our precious biodiversity will require a lot more. It would really help if we stopped creating the situations that require our ingenuity.
Columnist Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
