Most endangered primate species identified in new report

A new global assessment has identified 25 primate species that are now the most endangered on Earth. Many survive as only a few hundred – or even a few dozen – individuals, and without swift intervention several could vanish within the next decade.

The biennial list, “Primates in Peril 2023-2025,” was prepared by the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group, the International Primatological Society and Re:wild, working with more than one hundred scientists.

The report replaces 15 names from the previous roster to spotlight equally desperate cases and spreads the alarm of endangered primates across Asia, Africa, Madagascar, and South America.

Changes on the endangered list

The editors emphasize that dropping a species does not mean its outlook improved. Instead, the panel wanted to highlight relatives facing the same grim future.

Indonesia and Madagascar each host four of the newly listed species, while China, Vietnam, and Nigeria follow with three apiece. Habitat loss, hunting, climate change, and the illegal wildlife trade remain the shared drivers of decline.

The endangered species in peril

In Sumatra’s upland Batang Toru forest only about 767 Tapanuli orangutans endure, making this ape the rarest great ape ever recorded.

Researchers calculate that the species now occupies barely 2.5 percent of its nineteenth-century range, and even that sliver is being chipped away by mining and a hydro-electric dam.

West Africa’s Cross River gorilla is in even steeper trouble. Fewer than 250 mature animals survive in eleven hill sites straddling the Nigeria-Cameroon border, where renewed civil unrest adds to logging and farming pressures.

Conservation plans have created new reserves and cross-border patrols, but the loss of one adult can erase years of local progress.

Smallest endangered primate

Madagascar adds the world’s smallest endangered primate to the list. Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur weighs a mere thirty grams yet has lost more than eighty percent of its population in ten years as slash-and-burn agriculture fragments its dry forest home.

“This species has also disappeared from most of the remaining intact forests, which points to frightening consequences for possible conservation measures,” said Peter Kappeler, head of the field station in the Forêt de Kirindy. “This could be the first primate we lose forever in the 21st century, as there are no captive populations either.”

Even endangered species once thought safe enough to drop from the list can slip back. The limestone-dwelling Cao-vit gibbon of China and Vietnam, revived to public attention this year, actually numbers closer to ninety individuals than the hundred-plus once assumed, because older surveys double-counted groups.

Shared threats, different landscapes

Forest conversion for timber, farms, mines, and dams erases habitat on every continent. In Sumatra, satellite data show that lowland forest below 500 meters – prime orangutan territory – shrank sixty percent between 1985 and 2007.

In Madagascar’s Menabe region, forest cover has fallen more than thirty percent since 2012, splitting lemur populations into isolated fragments. For Cross River gorillas, a patchwork of villages, roads, and fields now separates once-connected sub-populations by distances no animal can safely cross.

Hunting and trafficking add a second blow. Although the Tapanuli orangutan lives in steep country, juveniles are still caught for the pet trade, and adults die in crop conflicts or snare traps. In West Africa gorilla poaching had fallen, but political violence since 2016 may be reviving the market for bushmeat.

Climate change lurks behind every local crisis. Longer dry seasons stress fruit-bearing trees, and fiercer storms flatten coastal forests – effects already noted in gibbon and lemur habitats.

Urgent action is needed

“The situation is dramatic. If we don’t act now, we will lose some of these species forever,” warned Christian Roos, a geneticist at the German Primate Center. “But there is hope – if science, politics, and society take action together.”

The report demands rapid expansion of protected areas, but equally stresses enforcement on the ground, where illegal logging and wildlife trade still thrive. It calls on governments to tighten laws, stop land grabs, and involve Indigenous and local communities as full partners.

Funding must move beyond short grants. Long-term patrol salaries, ecological restoration and, where numbers crash, carefully managed translocations or ex-situ colonies are all needed.

“Every primate species that we lose not only means an irreparable loss for nature, but also for us humans,” Roos said. “Because primates are not only fascinating animals – they are also key species of our ecosystems.”

Hope for endangered species

Conservation can still tip the balance. Cooperative work by China and Vietnam secured two reserves for the Cao-vit gibbon and involved villagers in patrol jobs; the tiny population is now stable and even forming new groups.

In Nigeria camera-trap images of Cross River gorilla infants prove that, when forests are left standing and snares removed, the apes will breed again.

Success stories share three traits: local stewardship, legal implication, and money that lasts long enough to rebuild forests. The new list shows exactly where those ingredients must be applied first.

It is not a roll-call of hopeless cases. It is an emergency action plan, and the next edition will reveal whether the global community has chosen rescue over remembrance.

The report can be found here.

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