Baby Orangutans Saved From Life of Cruelty Hugging in Cage Baby Orangutans Screaming in Fear
This interview aired in on Apr 4, 2010 and November 22, 2010). It was transcribed by Ben Kennedy.
Function 2 of 2.
Part one: The problem-solving ape: what makes orangutans special and why they are threatened
Michelle Desilets, Executive Director of the Orangutan Land Trust, spoke with Laurel Neme on her "The WildLife" radio testify and podcast virtually the process of rehabilitating orphaned orangutans and pedagogy them to exist wild. This is the 2d in a 2-function interview. The get-go part covered orangutan biology, habits and the interconnected threats, from the pet trade to habitat loss and expansion of oil palm plantations, facing these creatures. This 2nd part focuses on what happens to surviving orangutans.
The Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center in Primal Kalimantan, Indonesia received its first dozen orangutans in 1999 and at present has over 600 orangutans in its intendance, making it the largest such center in the world. Its work has been featured in the United states of america on the Fauna Planet series Orangutan Island, and also in the BBC program Orangutan Diary.
Did you lot know orphaned orangutans get to schoolhouse to get the skills they need to survive in the wild? Just like for humans, in orangutan nursery schoolhouse, the babies and toddlers focus on their gross motor skills past learning to climb. They practice and practice, just get upset when they've climbed upwardly a tree and are afraid to climb down without help. When they've mastered the nuts, they move on to unproblematic school, or Forest School One, where they gain more skills, such as finding food, building nests, and knowing what dangers to avert, like snakes. Forest Schoolhouse 2 is like to human high schools, where the orangutans get increasingly independent. Orangutan "academy" is the adjacent footstep, where the animals practice living on their own simply are still supported if they go into trouble.
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center. All photos by Rhett A. Butler |
In 1997, Michelle Desilets, together with Lone Dröscher Nielsen, began exploring the creation of a new project in Central Kalimantan to address the swelling numbers of orphaned orangutans and, in 1999, with aid from Dr. Willie Smits and fiscal backing from the Gibbon Foundation and the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) Republic of indonesia, the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center was born. She'southward long been committed to orangutan conservation. Every bit founder and Executive Director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK, Michelle initiated a number of international campaigns to assist orangutans, including campaigns to finish the illegal trade of orangutans, to repatriate known smuggled orangutans, and a entrada for sustainable palm oil. She sits on several working groups in the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. She also founded and is the Executive Director of the Orangutan Land Trust (based in the United Kingdom), which supports the preservation, restoration and protection of land in areas where orangutans naturally exist or have existed in the by. The main aim of the Orangutan Land Trust is to ensure that safety woods areas are set aside for orangutans and other species to form a salubrious ecosystem. She spends a good deal of time at the Nyaru Menteng project, and provides this inside look at orangutan rehabilitation.
The following is an excerpt from The Wild fauna with Laurel Neme, a plan that probes the mysteries of the brute world through interviews with scientists and other wildlife investigators. The Wild animals arrogance every Monday from 1-2 pm Eastern Standard Time on WOMM-LP, 105.9 FM in Burlington, Vermont. You tin can livestream it at world wide web.theradiator.org or download the podcast from iTunes, www.laurelneme.com, or http://laurelneme.podbean.com. This interview aired in on Apr 12, 2010 and November 29, 2010. It was transcribed by Ben Kennedy.
Plant nursery SCHOOL
Laurel Neme: How does a rescued orangutan learn to be wild?
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center |
Michelle Desilets: In the rehabilitation process we take several "schools." If you can imagine a very young orangutan coming in who's nether one year of age, they start off in the nursery. The plant nursery is a very tiny, footling wood with very tiny, skinny, little copse. The girls, we call them babysitters, local Dyak women who look after these orangutans, make trivial climbing frames about a pes or so off the ground, and they encourage the babies to learn to climb.
Laurel Neme: How do they practice that?
Michelle Desilets: Babies acquire to climb from side-to-side first—with a back-and-along back-and-along with their arms upwardly on the branch and their feet sitting on the basis or 2 inches off the ground, and the babysitter sitting behind ready to catch them should they fall. The expect of concentration, with their tongues sticking out of their mouths walking dorsum and forth, is astounding.
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Eye |
So, eventually a few months in, they get their confidence. And they like to climb up. Not down. Just up. They'll go upwardly about five or half-dozen feet then look downwardly and start to scream blueish murder until some babysitter comes and picks them up and brings them back down for a piddling reassuring caress. Then they get straight back upwardly again.
That scenario plays out fourth dimension and time once more until they finally cotton on to how to come down the tree on their ain. Once they start to do that, and they're confident and exploring and they're learning most the food they can eat, and then they might be ready for "Forest School One."
In both plant nursery and Forest School One, the orangutans are looked after by babysitters 24 hours a twenty-four hour period. They're taken out to the forest first thing in the forenoon. They learn what they demand to learn. And just before sunset they're brought back into wherever it is they're going to be sleeping. In some places it'southward a nursery business firm. In other places, there are big social enclosures, and the babysitters volition sleep with them.
Laurel Neme: Do they slumber in beds or nests?
Michelle Desilets: The smaller ones sleep in little laundry baskets filled with pillows and toys and blankets and sometimes leaves. The girls sleep with them. They get upwardly every few hours and feed them and alter their diapers. This goes on for a number of years.
BABYSITTER Training
Laurel Neme: What is the training for the babysitters?
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Eye |
Michelle Desilets: We started off in 1999 with a couple local women. We tried to railroad train them near what we knew most looking after orangutans. That came from people similar Lonely Dröscher Nielsen, who runs the project, and her husband at the fourth dimension, who was Mr. Odom, who was a Dyak and grew up in the forest and knew all of the foods and whatnot. And then these women pass on the skills to all the new women who come in. And so they're trained on site past more senior staff.
Oftentimes the women volition come in having never seen an orangutan in their lives, or maybe just seeing one in a zoo or photograph or on goggle box. I've seen them come in and be scared to death of a two-year-sometime orangutan, absolutely mortified, [wondering] is this i getting gear up to bite me or pull my pilus? After about iii days, they realize which ones they need to be scared of.
Forest Schoolhouse I
Laurel Neme: What happens in Forest School One?
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center |
Michelle Desilets: Woods School One is a slightly bigger forest with slightly bigger trees. The orangutans are about one to three years of age. And, once more, they're going out to the forest in the day, and perchance have more than guided lessons. We teach them how to find the correct kinds of sticks and dig for termites, and where you lot might find termites, and how to find honey and get it out of holes with a stick.
We accept a lesson that we practice, which causes a great deal of entertainment amongst the staff (which kind of blows the whole thing), only you've got to teach orangutans to be afraid of snakes. Remember, orangutans are creatures that learn what they demand to know. It's not instinct. That'southward what makes them a more intelligent species. Any species that spends a long fourth dimension in schooling, a long time learning, has a capacity for learning and encephalon development that a species that relies on instinct doesn't have. Just think nearly your own children in school—the longer they go to school, the more intelligent they are. It's quite a long learning process.
Laurel Neme: How do you teach an orangutan how to find sticks, or to discover honey or to be scared of snakes?
Michelle Desilets: We demonstrate. Nosotros say we teach them [merely actually] we facilitate learning. We create opportunities. If nosotros go back to the termites—our girls know what kind of rocks and logs might contain termites. They'll stumble across one and boot information technology with their human foot and say "oh, look at that" and pretend to suck up the termites with their lips or choice them out with their fingers or a stick and pretend to swallow them. Usually, it simply goes to the side of their mouth and tossed behind them. Even though the orangutans are very clever, sometimes nosotros can fool them. So they learn to endeavor these termites and to similar them
Laurel Neme: How about teaching them to be afraid of snakes?
 Orangutan Care Center in Pasir Panjang, near Pangkalan Bun |
Michelle Desilets: Snakes is a great 1. We've got these really realistic prophylactic snakes. Nosotros'll go out early in the morning time, before the orangutans go out, and we'll surreptitiously hide it in the leaf matter or forth a low lying branch along the path where we'll be walking. Then we'll starting time walking in the forest with the orangutans, with the promise that one of the orangutans will notice. If they fail to notice, ane of the babysitters will notice. Once it's noticed, the babysitters will start making all kinds of mother orangutan noises like this (Desilets simulates noise), and grab upwardly all the babies and get climbing upward the trees. They'll take very big sticks and throw it at the snake and beat the snake, keeping their distance all the fourth dimension and acting totally afraid. All the orangutans, their pilus stands up on the terminate and their eyes get very broad and they get straddling up the trees, if they haven't been picked up, and they learn, this is the reaction that yous're meant to take if y'all see one of these things: you get out of there and y'all throw things at it.
But, invariably, there is one babysitter who is laughing the whole time. And, invariably, there is i orangutan who says "come on this is a bit of plastic or a bit of rubber" and picks information technology up and swings it around. "See this!" Sometimes the lesson doesn't work, but for the most function it does.
We do nest building with them and we climb up the copse with them. We place out and provide and pluck plants that might provide food in the wild. Until they see their mother or their surrogate mother cull and consume a plant, they're non actually aware of whether it's something they can consume. Like a baby, they attempt a lot of things. So if they're endeavour something that'southward going to be toxic to them, nosotros take to be very quick to pluck it out of their mouth and go "no, no, no, no, no" and make orangutan noises that say this is not one that you consume. Replicating an orangutan mother has its limitations. At that place is only so much y'all tin can practice but we effort our best. One of the best things we tin can do is to simply provide these opportunities for learning. That takes years. Different things may happen different days. Different opportunities can crop upwards. Different species may come through the wood and they have to interact and know what to do.
Laurel Neme: What is the curriculum of Wood School One?
Michelle Desilets: Once they beginning to get a little bit older, they'll practice building nests but they'll still come in in the evening and sleep in these kind of customs enclosures for a sense of security. This is where they slumber and this is where they'll get food for the night.
Only every bit they proceeds independence and they meliorate their skills in nest building, they'll build a nest later in the evening and they may stay up there when its time to go domicile. The babysitters will go very cantankerous, calling "Come up on downward, come on down." Simply the orangutan volition oft stay in this nest, if they're quite independent. The staff volition come in and say "Oh no, so-and-so is in the nest, what should we do?" and it's the aforementioned [response] every time. We say "You'll have to go in the forest and sleep under the nest and make certain everything is okay." So, the babysitters go into the wood and sleep under the nest, because invariably, this orangutan wakes up at 9 or 10 or midnight and freaks out. "Oh my gosh, where am I? What am I doing here? Where is my warm friendly place with all my friends?" They'll start screaming and coming downwards and demand to be reassured them and brought back to their proper bed and sleeping area. Eventually, they'll stay all night. And, eventually in the daytime, these aforementioned orangutans, growing in confidence and independence, become very, very [naughty] and they start to pull at the hair of the babysitters, or bite them, or cause all kinds of grief. When the babysitters start to complain plenty, we know these orangutans are ready for Forest School Two.
FOREST SCHOOL Two
Laurel Neme: What happens in Forest School Two?
 Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Centre |
Michelle Desilets: Forest School Two is similar high school. It'south another location. It's another patch of woods. It's a bigger forest with bigger trees and, chiefly, no more babysitters. No more women. Now we've got men. These men, who we call "technisse," are very serious indeed. You're not going to get cuddles from these guys. Well, peradventure from i or two. One or 2 become known as the softies, and if an orangutan gets thumped past his best friend or stung by a bee or something, you can go to [them and] go a reassuring cuddle and experience safe. Just, generally speaking, these guys are non cuddly things, and that encourages independence that much farther.
These orangutans are, for the most part, sleeping out in their nest through the dark. Yous don't demand to camp out underneath them. They're learning and then many more skills, usually from ane another. This volition go on for another three years. [And then, now they're] 3 to six years quondam.
Laurel Neme: How do you know when they're gear up to move on?
Michelle Desilets: Unremarkably one of the indicators at the upper end of the schooling is that they go "walkabout." They go wandering a bit to far for their own good. This forest is only a certain expanse of woods. Beyond that, in that location is some human development. So, for their prophylactic, and for the safety of bordering communities, if they're wandering so far that they're coming into contact, we'll exist bringing them dorsum and take to discover another solution.
ORANGUTAN UNIVERSITY
Laurel Neme: What's the next solution?
 Orangutan island |
Michelle Desilets: The next solution is the orangutan academy: the islands. Nosotros accept five islands. They're river islands, surrounded by water. Orangutans can't swim, and so the water provides a barrier system to keep them prophylactic and proceed them on the islands. We put them on the isle and in that location, just like a university, they're meant to show us that they can act equally adults and become by in the real world. Simply just like college for humans, if something goes terribly incorrect and they brand a consummate mess of things, someone is going to come in and salve the day. Human kids call mom and dad, and unremarkably they'll get bailed out of any they've gotten themselves into trouble for. [When] the orangutans have some problem, like getting bullied or non thriving or getting sick, we intervene and aid them on their way.
They'll go provisional feedings. They're mostly looking for food out in their environment, but to make sure they're fat and healthy and getting all the diet they demand, we do provide additional food on feeding platforms.
Laurel Neme: Are humans living on the islands?
Michelle Desilets: Humans do not alive on the islands but our staff [go out in that location for] two feedings a day. They circumnavigate these islands in boats and are meant to spot each orangutan within every 24 hours. If they report that they haven't seen one, say, Hamlet, then at means nosotros have to search for Village. We have to make certain nix happens to them.
Laurel Neme: How practice you exercise that?
Michelle Desilets: We'll send a team of people out in that location to become look for Hamlet and make sure he hasn't get ill or had an injury or been bitten past a snake. So nosotros can intervene quite quickly.
Laurel Neme: How long practise the orangutans stay on the island?
Michelle Desilets: [They spend] a couple of years on the island, showing us they can practice these things. Then information technology's time for release.
Laurel Neme: How will the release work?
 Tanjung Puting National Park |
Michelle Desilets: This yr [will be] the starting time time that nosotros'll be releasing rehabilitating orangutans. It's very heady for anybody. Pic this minor center opening in 1999 , with or a dozen babe orangutans. Now, merely 10+ years after, 600 orangutans are at the center, with a few hundred ready for release afterward having gone through seven, 8, 9, ten years of training. They're gear up to go off to the big bad earth and be released. Information technology's taken well-nigh as long as that to detect a suitable release site and to secure it—to brand certain that it'due south not going to be sold for logging or mining or palm oil, and that the authorities is going to work with us to proceed these orangutans safe indefinitely, and that's far from communities where there is going exist whatever human-wildlife conflict.
Laurel Neme: What volition happen when the releases get-go?
[Note: The first releases of orangutan "graduates" were originally scheduled to accept place in bound 2010. Notwithstanding, they accept not nevertheless started due to administrative issues related to securing advisable state.]
Michelle Desilets: [When we release them] we'll tranquilize these orangutans at the project, put them in these large, light transport cages that [will be] slung under helicopters and taken to their destination and released. At present, that'south not the cease of the line. We're all the same going to scout them.
Laurel Neme: How volition you continue to keep tabs on the released orangutans?
 Released orangutan in Sumatra'due south Gunung Leuser National Park |
Michelle Desilets: These orangutans will exist the first orangutans to have a tracking device on them. You can't actually put a collar on orangutans considering they've got no necks. They've got these huge pharynx pouches. When they shrug, the collars would come off. A visitor has developed a subcutaneous tracking device that will allow us to track their movements either from the ground or the air from quite some altitude and will concluding for 2 years. Nosotros'll match this with visual tracking from people on the footing—staff that are going to be watching and seeing that they're staying fat and healthy and behaving properly. Nosotros accept loftier hopes for a very successful rate of survival for this very developed and thorough rehabilitation procedure and the consideration taken into the qualification for release: the qualification for land into which they're being released (that'southward going to provide enough food sources and that'southward safety); and also the qualifications of the orangutans that are going up, that they've demonstrated they can live independently, that they can cull the correct food sources, they know what threat to stay abroad from, such every bit snakes, and they're healthy.
Laurel Neme: What practice you lot hope the end result will be?
Michelle Desilets: Past doing this, nosotros'll actually be creating two or three viable populations in a protected forest. It's not just a welfare outcome. It'due south not just doing it for the sake of these individuals [considering] they have a correct to live in the wild and to live healthy and free. Just it is contributing to their conservation. [It's] not merely creating viable populations merely, past virtue of these orangutans being in the forest, these forests and all the species that share these forests will be protected.
Laurel Neme: Is this the largest primate rescue projection in the world?
Michelle Desilets: Yes. The Nyaru Menteng project on it's own is the largest rescue projection, in the sense that it has the largest number of primates that its currently looking after—over 600. The Kalimantan Orangutan Survival (BOS) in Republic of indonesia has another project in Eastward Kalimantan that has about 225 orangutans and virtually fifty sun bears. It's also the site of Willie Smits' groundbreaking efforts to reforest a wasteland [Samboja Lestari Reforestation Project]. Close to 2,000 hectares (or 5,000 acres) of complete wasteland he has successfully reforested with some 1,800 species of plants, and [information technology'due south] brought dorsum a groovy deal of the natural biodiversity—insects, bird life and even mammals—into this region. It's changed the hydrology and atmospheric precipitation. It'south an incredible model for what tin be done in reforestation and will serve as a minor only meaningful refuge for wildlife.
At the same time, Kalimantan Orangutan Survival (BOS) as well protects huge areas of forest containing wild orangutans, [such every bit] the Mawas Reserve, which has well-nigh 0.five million acres of wood in Central Borneo and is domicile to three,500 wild orangutans.
 Nyaru Menteng |
Some people enquire "How long before the orangutan is extinct in the wild?" Even experts will say ii years, five years, or 10 years before it's widely extinct. [They say] in that location volition be some pockets here and there but that they'll be in such small numbers that they won't be genetically viable in the long term. Just I disagree with that because nosotros already protect viable populations—populations over 3,000 will exist hugely viable so long as we continue to protect these areas. That requires money and political will. Then, the species will not go extinct in the wild. But is that expert enough? Say nosotros salvage iii,000, or even 6,000, wild orangutans, you lot've got to figure about 4,000 or more than are going to die these unnecessary and horrific deaths I've described, from lingering starvation or homo-wild fauna conflict. Morally that can't be correct and we need to do something nearly that.
Laurel Neme: When you release the animals for the first time, how many will y'all be releasing?
Michelle Desilets: I don't know. I oasis't gotten the details from our squad who are working day and night on logistics. Nosotros'll release a handful at a time at several locations. A group of orangutans that nosotros know get along and learn from each other and so forth will be released in one location and watched. Then every bit finances and logistics allow, release some other fix of orangutans at another location. The target is over a hundred orangutans to be released.
Laurel Neme: Is there a graduation anniversary? (laughs)
Michelle Desilets: (laughing) Nosotros put mortar boards on them and we play "Pomp and Circumstance."
Related manufactures
The problem-solving ape: what makes orangutans special and why they are threatened
(12/xiii/2010) Michelle Desilets, Executive Manager of the Orangutan State Trust, spoke with Laurel Neme on her "The Wild fauna" radio show and podcast about orangutans. In the first part of her interview, they discussed orangutan biology, habits and the interconnected threats, from the pet trade to habitat loss and expansion of oil palm plantations, facing these creatures. The second part covers the process of rehabilitating orangutans and teaching them to exist wild.
Indonesian people-non international donors or orangutan conservationists-volition decide the ultimate fate of Indonesia'south forests
(07/29/2010) Many of the environmental problems facing Indonesia are embodied in the plight of the orangutan, the red ape that inhabits the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutan populations take plummeted over the past century, a result of hunting, habitat loss, the pet trade, and human-ape conflict. Appropriately, governments, charities, and concerned individuals have ploughed tens of millions of dollars into orangutan conservation, but accept picayune to show in terms of slowing or reversing the decline. The same tin be said virtually wood conservation in Republic of indonesia: while massive amounts of money have been put toward protecting and sustainable using forests, the sum is dwarfed by the returns from converting forests into timber, rice, paper, and palm oil. So orangutans—and forests—go on to lose out to economic evolution, at least as conventionally pursued. Poor governance ways that even when well-intentioned measures are in place, they are oftentimes undermined by corruption, aloofness, or poorly-designed policies. So is there a time to come for Republic of indonesia's red apes and their woods home? Erik Meijaard, an ecologist who has worked in Republic of indonesia since 1993 and is considered a world authorisation on orangutan populations, is charily optimistic, although he sees no 'silver bullet' solutions.
Palm oil both a leading threat to orangutans and a key source of jobs in Sumatra
(09/24/2009) Of the world'due south 2 species of orangutan, a great ape that shares 96 percent of man's genetic makeup, the Sumatran orangutan is considerably more endangered than its cousin in Kalimantan. Today there are believed to be fewer than 7,000 Sumatran orangutans in the wild, a consequence of the wildlife trade, hunting, and accelerating devastation of their native forest habitat past loggers, modest-scale farmers, and agribusiness. Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra is one of the concluding strongholds for the species, serving every bit a refuge among paper pulp concessions and rubber and oil palm plantations. While orangutans are relatively well protected in areas around tourist centers, they are afflicted by poorly regulated interactions with tourists, which accept increased the risk of illness and resulted in high mortality rates among infants almost tourist centers like Bukit Lawang. Farther, orangutans that range outside the park or live in remote areas or on its margins face conflicts with developers, including loggers, who may or may not know about the beingness of the park, and plantation workers, who may kill any orangutans they encounter in the fields. Working to improve the fate of orangutans that discover their way into plantations and unprotected community areas is the Orangutan Information Eye (OIC), a local NGO that collaborates with the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS).
Rehabilitation not plenty to solve orangutan crisis in Republic of indonesia
(08/20/2009) A babe orangutan ambles across the grass at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation'south Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Central Kalimantan, in the middle of Indonesian Borneo. The ape pauses, picks up a stick and makes his style over to a plastic log, lined with small holes. Breaking the stick in two, he pokes one end into a hole in an try to extract honey that has been deposited by a conservation worker. His expression shows the tool'south use has been fruitful. But he is not alone. To his right another orangutan has turned half a coconut shell into a helmet, two others wrestle on the lawn, and another youngster scales a papaya tree. There are dozens of orangutans, all of which are about the same historic period. Just outside the compound, dozens of younger orangutans are getting climbing lessons from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) staff, while still younger orangutans are being fed milk from bottles in a nearby nursery. Notwithstanding more orangutans—teenagers and adults—can exist plant on "Orangutan Island" beyond the middle'southward main grounds. Meanwhile several recently wild orangutans sit down in cages. This is a waiting game. BOS hopes to eventually release all of these orangutans back into their natural habitat—the majestic rainforests and swampy peatlands of Key Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. Simply for many, this is a fate that may never be realized.
Orangutan guerrillas fight palm oil in Borneo
(06/01/2009) Despite worldwide attending and business concern, prime orangutan habitat across Sumatra and Borneo continues to exist destroyed by loggers and palm oil developers, resulting in the death of upward to 3,000 orangutans per twelvemonth (of a population less than 50,000). Conservation groups like Borneo Orangutan Survival study rescuing record numbers of babe orangutans from oil palm plantations, which are now a far bigger source of orphaned orangutans than the illicit pet merchandise. The volume of orangutans entering care centers is such that these facilities are running out of room for rescued apes, with translocated individuals sometimes waiting several months until suitable forest is constitute for reintroduction. Even and then they aren't safe; in recent months loggers have started clearing 2 important reintroduction sites (forests about Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in Sumatra and Mawas in Central Kalimantan). Meanwhile beyond half a dozen rehabilitation centers in Malaysia and Republic of indonesia, more than 1,000 babe orangutans—their mothers killed by oil palm plantation workers or in the process of forest clearing—are beingness trained past humans for hopeful reintroduction into the wild, assuming secure habitat can be found. Dismayed past the rising orangutan price, a grassroots organization in Fundamental Kalimantan is fighting back. Led by Hardi Baktiantoro, the Heart for Orangutan Protection (COP) has mounted a guerrilla-style entrada against companies that are destroying orangutan habitat in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo.
Saving Orangutans in Borneo
(05/24/2006) A look at conservation efforts in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. I'm in Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Kalimantan on the isle of Borneo. At 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) Tanjung Puting is the largest protected expanse of coastal tropical heath and peat swamp forest in southeast Asia. It's likewise one of the biggest remaining habitats for the critically endangered orangutan, the population of which has been peachy macerated in contempo years due to habitat destruction and poaching. And orangutans have become the focus of a much wider effort to relieve Borneo's natural surround. We are headed to Campy Leakey, named for the renowned Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey. Here lies the center of the Orangutan Research conservation Projection. Established by Birute Mary Galdikas, a preeminent primatologist and founder of the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), the project seeks to support the conservation and understanding of the orangutan and its rain forest habitat while rehabilitating ex-captive individuals. The Orangutan Enquiry conservation Project is the public face of orangutan conservation in this part of Borneo, the Republic of indonesia-controlled part of Borneo. Borneo, the tertiary largest island in the world, was once home to some of the world's most purple, and forbidding forests. With swampy coastal areas fringed past mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was near impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the isle until a century ago.
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Source: https://news.mongabay.com/2010/12/teaching-orangutans-to-be-wild-orangutan-rehabilitation/
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