Charity plea for orangutan care help after cyclone devastation

A veterinary charity has launched an emergency appeal to help restore clinical capacity for the care of threatened orangutans in south-east Asia following devastating recent floods.

More than 1,000 people are thought to have died, with hundreds of thousands more displaced, following a cyclone which struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra in November.

But amid the human devastation, fears are now being raised about the disaster’s potential impact on the island’s critically endangered Sumatran orangutan population.

UK-based Orangutan Veterinary Aid (OVAID) said scientists had warned the floods could even be a “possible extinction event” for Sumatra’s two species.

Conservation efforts

Co-founder Sara Fell Hicks said: “We are devastated by what has happened to veterinary friends and conservation colleagues as a result of the disastrous floods and landslides.

“We must help them continue their vital work which contributes hugely to the conservation of orangutan in Borneo and Sumatra where every single orangutan life is precious.

“Veterinary care is a key piece of the jigsaw in conservation efforts to sustain the orangutan populations which are under constant threat from so many directions – habitat destruction, poaching, the illegal wildlife trade and increasingly climate change.

“The vet teams tell us what they need and we provide it – a vet without equipment is like a mechanic without tools.”