Few rescued orangutans go back to natural wild

Few rescued orangutans go back to natural wild

TANJUNG PUTING, Central Kalimantan (JP): Before Gistok was
brought to Tanjung Puting National Park and orangutan
rehabilitation center, he wore clothing over his long red hair
and ate tea and cakes with the children of a family in Central
Kalimantan.

A princely existence for an orangutan, but table manners don't
help when it comes to survival in the forest. At Tanjung Puting,
rangers try to do the impossible -- teach orangutans who have
been estranged from the forest to live in their natural
environment.

"Think about a small human child raised in a cage or in a
closet. Are they normal? No," said a scientist familiar with the
park.

Many of the orangutans that come to Tanjung Puting, one of
five orangutan rehabilitation centers in Malaysia and Indonesia,
have suffered from neglect in captivity. The park has a
formidable challenge in trying to instill information about
survival to orangutans who are already a few years old. Humans
are still working to determine the scope of this information,
which the animals would have learned naturally from their
mothers.

Tanjung Puting is lauded internationally for its work
integrating species and environmental conservation. The park has
saved 161 orangutans since 1971, members of an endangered species
who otherwise would have died from being in captivity.

Of these, 122 now swing through the trees in a safe
environment as semi-wild animals, those who essentially live
independently but still appear at the camp from time to time.
These orangutans, who would not have had the opportunity to mate
in captivity, have given birth to 25 babies at Tanjung Puting.

But only a handful of the rescued orangutans return to the
wild completely, able to live entirely independent of human care.
This fact is testimony to the ambition of Tanjung Puting and the
extent of damage that can come to an animal in human hands.

The success of the reintroduction effort "depends on how long
the orangutan was kept by people, and how intensively the owner
took care of the orangutan," says Herry Susilo, the head of
Tanjung Puting.

Gistok fared better in captivity than most orangutans. The
illegal pet trade landed him in a loving family who did their
best to care for his needs.

Yet Gistok suffers from is an inability to shake his domestic
upbringing.

Three years after arriving at Tanjung Puting, seven-year-old
Gistok has learned to ply his way through the forest and find
bark, fruit and leaves to eat, but he still can't make a nest to
sleep in the safety of the treetops. When the sun goes down,
Gistok curls up like a dog and goes to sleep on one of the park's
many feeding platforms or docks, where he slumbers fitfully,
often waking to the sounds of would-be predators.

Gistok is still as comfortable socializing with humans as he
is with other orangutans; watching him drink from a teacup he
snatched from a boat suggests that his civilized past is still in
recent memory. Visitors find him adorable, park rangers call him
naughty, and Gistok remains a misfit who would not survive long
outside park borders.

Although visitors are free to roam throughout Tanjung Puting,
rangers hope that they will remember the park is for
reintegrating the animals into the wild and not a public petting
zoo.

Some wildlife biologists such as Ron Lilley, species
conservation officer at World Wide Fund for Nature, concur with
the park rangers. "It's all very well that people want the
touchy-feely experience because the orangutans are so lovable,
but they do the orangutans a great disservice."

The strategy of the park is to let orangutans like Gistok
rehabilitate themselves as much as possible under the tutelage of
fellow "people of the forest."

Newly rescued orangutans spend only as much time in the
confines of the clinic as is necessary to ascertain that they are
no carrying human diseases into the park.

At Tanjung Harapan, the first camp along the Sekoyner River,
orangutans are set free. They learn to socialize with other
orangutans, who teach them how to find food in the forest. As
orangutans eat an estimated 400 varieties of food to ensure their
survival in times of scarcity, it is really only other red-haired
apes who are capable of teaching them.

Meanwhile, rangers hold feedings twice a day with bananas and
milk to make sure the animals get enough food. Orangutans
throughout the park devour 700 kilos of bananas each week at
these feedings.

Rangers soon place the orangutans in trees or on large sticks
so they can learn to climb and make nests. Rangers give the
orangutans leaves to sleep on to simulate the natural environment
from their earliest days in the park.

When orangutans stop coming regularly to the feedings, they
graduate to a camp a few kilometers upriver, Pondok Tanggui, so
they can live in the forest with orangutans who are more
independent.

Rangers still offer bananas at Pondok Tanggui twice a day, but
it is hoped that the orangutans will be less dependent upon them
to survive.

Some orangutans disappear in the forest quickly. Others, like
Gistok, may never make the leap to independence because of the
intensity of their experience in captivity. But at least Gistok
is now free to swing in the trees. (Becky Mowbray)