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)