Sixty orangutan babies seized

SAMBOJA, East Kalimantan: A local conservation office has seized from residents sixty orangutan babies aged between two months to one year in raids over the past few months.

Willie Smits of the Ministry of Forestry told Antara that the orangutan babies are now being kept in a quarantined area in Wanariset Samboja for a three year rehabilitation program. After that, the orangutans will be returned to the wilderness.

Smits said the current drought adversely affected orangutans. The animals, facing a shortage of water and food because of the ongoing forest fires, have had to forage for food in human settlements, where they have often been caught.

Smits estimated that the population of orangutans in Kalimantan does not exceed 20,000, while in Sumatra there are only 5,000 to 8,000, or half of their number in the 1970s. (swe)