Orangutan survey delivers good news and bad

How many Sumatran orangutans are there? More than we thought but fewer than there were.

For a creature that lives in remote, dense forest, getting a handle on the population size is exceedingly difficult, even when the animal is as large as an orangutan.

According to the last big survey of Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), published in 2004, there were just 6600 members of this species left on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. But a new, more expansive survey more than doubles this figure to 14,613. This might sound like good news for the Sumatran orangutan, but it isn't. It's just that the 2004 count was way off the mark.