Orangutan rehab takes time and money

Orangutan rehab takes time and money

Bambang M, Contributor, Yogyakarta

Fani, a two-year-old orangutan is a favorite of visitors and
staff at the Jogja Animal Rescue Center.

Whenever you come close to her, she will immediately give you
a big hug and refuse to let go. But if you carry her to a tree,
which is home to orangutans, she will quickly free herself from
you and quickly climb up the tree.

Her innocent face and dark eyes make her appear harmless and
adorable.

Baby orangutan are so cute that many people like to keep them
as pets. These people -- including government officials, in
keeping orangutans as pets, are breaking the law that protect the
species.

Baby orangutans destined to be pets are forcibly taken from
their mothers, causing them trauma, as happened to Fani.

Sugihartono, the director of the center, said Fani always
appeared sad whenever she encountered a grown female orangutan at
the center.

"Maybe she remembers her mother," he said.

Young orangutans traded in the black market also are
traumatized. Hunters usually kill the mothers so they can take
the babies.

Willie Smits, founder of the Foundation of Borneo Orangutan
Survival (BOS), the largest primate rehabilitation center in the
world, said that for every baby orangutan that was traded, there
were two other babies and three mother orangutans that had been
killed.

Based on his research at the animal market at Pasar Pramuka in
East Jakarta, he said the three mothers were intentionally killed
by poachers, while the two babies would have died in one of
several ways: accidentally killed by a stray bullet, being struck
by a machete or from injuries sustained from falling from a tree.

They also might die from infections from wounds or because of
other diseases.

Before they arrive on the black market, a baby orangutan must
make a long journey, crossing the ocean in a small cage.

Sugihartono said the mortality rate for the orangutans at the
rehab center was high because many of them had various diseases.

"Of 70 orangutans here only about 20 manage to survive."

Orangutans are vulnerable to diseases. They can be infected by
humans because their DNA is a 97 percent match to the DNA of
humans.

Sugihartono also said Fani was afraid of fire and smoke,
possibly because it reminded her of the forest fires in
Kalimantan, where she used to live.

In fact, the recurring fires have made the forests of
Kalimantan a killing field for orangutans.

Smits, a tropical forest ecologist and senior adviser to the
Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry, estimated that forest fires in
Kalimantan from 1997 to 1998 killed about one-third of the
orangutans that lived in the forests.

However, Fani and the other orangutans in the care of the
Jogja Animal Rescue Center have an opportunity for a new life.

They will be sent to the rehabilitation and reintroduction
center in Wanariset Samboja in East Kalimantan, or the Nyaru
Menteng orangutan rehabilitation center in Central Kalimantan.

Here, the orangutans will learn how to survive on their own in
the wild, until they are ready to be rereleased.

Rehabilitating orangutans who grew up as pets is a challenge.
They have become accustomed to human beings and sometimes they
act like humans, eating the same food and drinks as us.

Fani, for example, loves to gulp down orange juice.

"Thus, the rehabilitation process for a young orangutan may
take seven years," Sugihartono said. "While for an adult
orangutan, it is two years."

He added that the cost of this process is between Rp 40
million (US$4,700) and Rp 50 million.

Since it was established in 1991, Wanariset Samboja has
rehabilitated about 400 orangutans with a success rate of 70
percent, according to Sugihartono.

The most spectacular rehabilitation process involved Uce, a
female orangutan found by Smits as she was gasping for her last
breath in the Klandasan market in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.

The process was recorded in the book Apa yang Dikatakan
Orangutan pada Alice: Petualangan di Hutan Hujan Tropis (What
Orangutans told Alice: Adventures in a Tropical Rain Forest) by
Dale Smith. It was a happy ending for Uce, who was able to return
to the wild and even have two babies.

The orangutan rehabilitation process becomes more difficult
because their habitat -- the lowland forest of Kalimantan -- is
disappearing. The World Bank warned that if the destruction of
the forest is not put to a halt, all of the forest in Kalimantan
will vanish by 2010.

If that happens, then all of the efforts and the money spent
for the rehabilitation of orangutans will have been pointless.

As their habitat shrinks, the orangutan have to compete among
themselves for survival. The losers have to find a new place to
live, and sometimes they end up in the plantations that have
encroached into the forest.

This results in two possibilities: the orangutan will be
caught, and then killed or sold by the captors.

Deforestation and the survival of the orangutan has created a
vicious cycle in the management of Indonesia's forests.
Unfortunately, this problem has never been handled seriously.

Orangutans are caught in this cycle and are waiting for
someone to free them from the threat of extinction.