🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
The Leuser Ecosystem covers roughly 2.6 million hectares of northern Sumatra.
The Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra is the only place on Earth where Sumatran orangutans coexist with Sumatran tigers, Sumatran elephants, and Sumatran rhinos. This overlapping habitat represents one of the last intact megafaunal assemblages in Southeast Asia. Spanning millions of acres, Leuser contains lowland rainforest, peat swamps, and mountainous terrain. For orangutans, this landscape provides critical canopy continuity and fruit diversity. For the other large mammals, it supplies prey, forage, and migratory corridors. The survival of all four species depends on maintaining this single ecological stronghold. Fragmentation within Leuser would simultaneously threaten multiple critically endangered populations.
💥 Impact (click to read)
Few ecosystems on Earth still support such a concentration of large mammals under extreme conservation pressure. The loss of Leuser would not mean the decline of one flagship species but the unraveling of an entire megafaunal network. Orangutans act as seed dispersers, elephants reshape vegetation, tigers regulate prey, and rhinos influence plant structure. Remove one, and the balance shifts unpredictably. The ecological complexity packed into this forest rivals that of protected African reserves. Yet it exists under constant development pressure.
Because Leuser influences regional rainfall and carbon storage, its destruction would ripple beyond Indonesia. International climate goals intersect directly with its preservation. Protecting the Sumatran orangutan in Leuser simultaneously safeguards three other globally endangered giants. The forest is not simply habitat; it is a biological convergence point that cannot be recreated anywhere else on Earth.
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