Rescue center tends to smuggle wild animals
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Memei, a siamang baby, arrived at the Gibbon Foundation Wild Animal Rescue Center in Tegal Alur, West Jakarta, on Sept. 8 with nine pellets lodged in her tiny body.
"We thought she would not survive. She was in a very poor condition. One of the pellets was lodged in her genital area," center manager Femke den Haas told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
Two months after her arrival, Memei was in a relatively good condition. She could sit on a tree branch and played with the animal keepers in the afternoon.
Memei was one of four siamang babies confiscated by the authorities at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport during a raid. The babies, who had been taken from the Sumatra rain forest, were about to be smuggled to Saudi Arabia, den Haas said.
"Usually the hunters kill the babies' mothers," she added.
The center is currently taking care of 17 siamang. Although they are physically healthy, some of them look sad and edgy.
"Most animals here are sad and in a distressed condition because they are far away from home," said den Haas.
The Dutch-citizen wild animal carer, who has been in Indonesia for three years, said that primates loved to groom themselves. "If they are distressed they won't care about self-grooming, so the fur will look dirty."
Each year, the center acts as a transit place for about 2,000 wild animals. It was housing numerous animals on the weekend, including three orangutans, 98 birds from eight species including lovebirds (Lorius lori) and cockatoos, a gibbon, a baby sun bear and 380 reptiles, including hundreds of pignose turtles, two crocodiles and a snake.
"Most of the animals arrived in poor condition. Some of the birds had their wings broken while some primates had their teeth pulled out," den Haas said, adding that the owners did that mostly to kill the animals' wild instincts.
Such actions take at least two years for rescuers to help the animals overcome and rehabilitate the animals so they can return to the wild.
When an animal arrives at the center, staffers first check the its health and take blood samples. Many wild animals kept in private zoos suffer "eating disorders" when they first arrive at the center.
"We had a case when a siamang came here and did not want to eat anything. We checked with the owner and we found out that the owner always gave satay from his restaurant," den Haas said.
When the animals are ready, the center will arrange transfer to rehabilitation centers across the country, such as on Seram Island, Maluku, for cockatoos, and in Kalimantan for orangutans.
However, many wild animals have found a permanent home in the center due to the high risk they would face if they were sent back to the wild.
"For example, lovebirds would have to deal with hunters who still freely roam the Papuan forest if we release them there," den Haas said.
The center was established and managed by the Ministry of Forestry in 2000 but is financed by the Gibbon Foundation. The foundation fully took over the center in October 2003 after learning that "the ministry employees were not transparent in their working system and did not understand what the wild needed".
The center currently employs eight staff members, including den Haas, veterinarian Zulfi and six animal keepers. They work around the clock seven days a week to help wild animals like Memei survive in a place far from their homes.