Tapanuli orangutans are the world’s most endangered great ape. Fewer than 800 remain, all previously thought to be in their native Indonesia. However, now an Indian zoo said it has one.
An Indian court cleared the 14km2 wildlife facility known as Vantara on Monday of allegations including unlawful acquisition of animals and financial wrongdoing.
However, the decision is unlikely to quiet questions about how Vantara, which describes itself as a wildlife rehabilitation and conservation center, has stocked its enclosures.
Photo: AFP
Vantara, run by businessman Anant Ambani, the son of Asia’s richest man, said it houses 150,000 animals of 2,000 species, far exceeding populations at well-known zoos in New York, London or Berlin.
Several experts on conservation and wildlife trade declined to speak on record about Vantara, citing the zoo’s previous legal actions against critics, but called is collection unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen anything on this scale,” a wildlife protection group conservation expert said. “It’s hoovering up animals from all over the world.”
Some of those acquisitions are more noteworthy than others, such as the single Tapanuli that arrived in Vantara between 2023 and last year, according to the facility’s submissions to India’s Central Zoo Authority.
Only officially described in 2017, Tapanulis are incredibly rare, Liverpool John Moores University orangutan specialist Serge Wich said.
They are confined to a small range in Indonesia and are in “dire straits,” because of threats such as mining and deforestation, he said.
Trade in the world’s most endangered species is prohibited by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), but there are exceptions, including for “captive-bred” animals, or those born in captivity to captive parents. There is only one CITES record of a Tapanuli orangutan ever being transferred internationally.
It left Indonesia in 2023, bound for the United Arab Emirates, where Vantara said its Tapanuli came from.
The transfer record describes the animal as “captive-bred,” but multiple experts said that description was implausible.
“There are no captive breeding programs for orangutans in Indonesia,” Orangutan Information Centre founder and chairman Panut Hadisiswoyo said.
Only a handful are known to be in captivity at all, at rehabilitation facilities in Indonesia, he said.
Panut said he was “surprised and shocked” to learn about Vantara’s Tapanuli orangutan.
“We do everything to protect them,” he said. “So it’s really, really distressing information.”
There is no information on where in Indonesia the animal originated.
Experts said it was possible the orangutan is not a Tapanuli at all. They look similar enough to Bornean and Sumatran orangutans that DNA testing would be needed for confirmation.
It could also be a mix of Tapanuli and another species, perhaps discovered by a zoo in its collection — although experts questioned why a facility would hand off such a rare animal.
However, if the animal is a Tapanuli, “it’s almost inevitable that it would have to be illegal,” orangutan conservation expert Erik Meijaard said.
“It would be super sad,” he added.
Vantara did not respond to requests for a comment on the orangutan and how it acquires animals.
The Tapanuli is not the first highly endangered animal to arrive at Vantara.
Spix’s macaws, a vibrant blue species native to Brazil, were extinct in the wild until recently.
Brazil has sought to prevent all trade and transfer of the birds.
It allowed a breeding facility in Germany to acquire some on condition they would not be sold or moved without Brazilian permission, documents submitted to CITES showed.
Yet in 2023, 26 Spix’s macaws from the German facility arrived in Vantara.
Vantara said it is working “to ensure that the calls of these rare birds are never lost from their native habitats.”
The case has rankled Brazil, which raised it repeatedly at CITES meetings.
Asked about Vantara’s Tapanuli, the CITES secretariat said “this matter is under review,” adding that it was “not in a position to provide information.”
CITES has acknowledged receiving “multiple reports” about imports of endangered animals into India.
India has said it would invite CITES officials for a visit, but has yet to provide “detailed information on the matter,” the secretariat said.
If Vantara does own a single Tapanuli orangutan, its conservation value would be limited, Panut said, urging the animal’s return to Indonesia.
Meijaard said conservation in their natural habitat in Indonesia provides “the only chance for this species’ survival.”
“Trying to breed orangutans outside Indonesia with some kind of long-term hope that they are going to contribute to the population is just pure nonsense,” he said.
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