Finding a home for orangutan 'refugees'
Posted: Thursday, April 16, 2009 9:22 AM
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On Assignment
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
SUMATRA, Indonesia – Waikiki was known as a problem child, but that was hardly surprising.
He spent the first few years of his life chained to a fence at the housing project where he got his name; it was also where he lost any fear of the humans who had killed his mother and sold him as a pet.
By the time conservationists rescued him, Waikiki was growing fast and had plenty of attitude. Once, after escaping from his cage and chasing off his keeper, he slowly and methodically dismantled the keeper’s motorcycle.
Conservationists tried twice to release him back to the wild, but he kept returning to human habitations, which were much more familiar to him than the forest. So they decided to take him deeper into the jungle, which is where we met the now 10-year-old orangutan.
His small travelling cage was carried to a remote part of the forest, and placed in a clearing near a river. We set up our camera about 10 yards from the cage, in the shadow of a tree, and placed another small camera in a bush close by the cage. We hoped our cameras would record his exit and ascent up the nearest tree – to freedom.
But when the cage was opened he headed straight for us. One keeper, whose stub of a finger was a reminder of the last time he tangled with an angry orangutan, decided that humoring Waikiki was not an option.
"Run, to the river," he yelled.
We waded into the water, while Waikiki paced up and down the bank. The conservationists splashed him with water and shouted: "Go Waikiki, go! Climb! Climb!" Eventually he skulked off into the jungle and we began the two-hour trek back to camp, our team speculating as to when they might see him again.
‘Conserving wildlife is becoming a crisis’
You really have to admire the commitment of the conservationists.
We spent almost a week with them in Sumatra, reporting on an ambitious new project to reclaim one of the island’s last areas of protected forest for the orangutan, which is critically endangered here.
There are only around 6,500 left in the wild, and some conservationists warn they could be extinct within 12 years.
"We’re running out of options. Conserving wildlife is becoming a crisis," said Ian Singleton, a former zoo-keeper from Britain, who now runs the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program.
"The biggest single threat everywhere is loss of habitat," he said.
Forests are being destroyed to make way for plantations for pulp and palm oil, which is touted as a new "green" fuel. The most vulnerable parts of the forest are the lowlands, which is where the orangutans live. Farmers regard them as pests.
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| Ian Williams/ NBC News |
| Young orangutans and their keeper during a climbing lesson at the rescue center. |
Beaten into bad shape
Singleton runs a rescue center in Medan, North Sumatra. During our visit it was home to 41 orangutans – the most they’ve ever had. Most are youngsters, some just babies.
"They’re a bunch of refugees, most of them. Almost all of them, their mothers were killed," said Singleton. "They are like human mothers. They’re going to die defending their kids."
Most of Sumatra's remaining wild orangutans live in the northern part of the island. Singleton's program aims to shift his "refugees" to a new home in Bukit Tigapuluh ("Thirty Hills") National park in Jambi, Central Sumatra. Dutch colonial records show orangutans lived here more than 100 years ago, and in theory at least, it’s a protected area.
But as Waikiki demonstrated, releasing them isn't straightforward. It can take months or even years before young orangutans, which have been kept as pets, are fit and confident enough to return to the wild.
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| Ian Williams/ NBC News |
| Young orangutans in a rescue center near Medan, North Sumatra. |
More than half of those who arrive at Singleton's center are in critical condition, some beaten or shot. He introduced us to 2-year-old Jarot, whose skull was broken by a farmer, who beat his mother to death. He was clinging on to his keeper, and would only climb into the trees if the keeper was also up there.
It wasn't that he couldn't climb, he just lacked the confidence. Young orangutans stay with their mother for nine years. For the first two or three they are inseparable, and the keeper works almost as a surrogate.
Then there's the question of food. They have to be re-introduced to jungle food – from termite nests to rattan palms – which they rarely came across as pets, if they are to survive back in the wild.
A new home for ‘refugees’
During our visit Singleton selected ten of his refugees for the 500-mile journey south to their new home, part of the trip was in off-road vehicles going down bumpy tracks, thick with mud.
"This is good," Singleton declared. "We know that if it’s this difficult for us to get in here, it will be tough for the illegal loggers."
That said, the loggers are creeping ever closer. Parts of the "buffer zone" around the park are being cleared to make way for a pulp plantation and our orangutan convoy was briefly stopped by the plantation's security men. They called the local police and demanded our names and IDs.
One of Singleton's keepers asked whether they'd like the names of the orangutans. It was meant as a joke, but the security men eagerly took down the details.
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| Ian Williams/ NBC News |
| It’s a tough ride back to the wild – stuck in the mud on the way back to the jungle. |
"The most protected parts of Indonesia are the plantations, not the forests," said Singleton.
Not all releases are as difficult at Waikiki's. From their base close to the edge of the national park, the keepers take the orangutans daily into the forest, where freedom at first is a sort of day release, until the day they just don't come back.
"One day they may just decide, that's enough, I'm not going back to that cage again," Singleton said.
So far he's released 129 orangutans into this area. There is some debate about how many make up a sustainable community. Singleton's best guess is around 200, since they come from such varied genetic backgrounds.
Trackers try and keep tabs on those that have been released, all of which are micro-chipped.
"Seeing them up there, doing what they are supposed to do, it's really fantastic," said Singleton, as we came across four of those previously released.
The odds are still heavily stacked against Sumatra's orangutans, but at least this group of refugees will have a fighting chance.
