The International Animal Rescue team in Indonesia has been under a lot of pressure with several urgent rescues coming hot on the heels of the well publicised translocations of four orangutans, stranded and starving in devastated forest.
The team was called to
help help an orangutan who was getting dangerously close
to humans due to habitat loss. The
rescue team traveled to Sukamaju, which is only about 30 minutes from the centre, and was able to capture
the large but thin male. After a short
time of stabilisation, he was then translocated to a larger area of forest where our
field team has reported seeing him again, but with a healthier body condition.
Sukma is wary but coping well with her new situation |
The next week, two more babies came under the team’s care. The first, named Sukma, is more wild in
nature and had been taken in by a man after he found her on a rambutan (fruit) plantation near a palm
oil plantation. She is about 4 years old
and was too much for the man to handle, so IAR was called in. There is no indication of what happened to
her mother. She remains very cautious of
humans, but is doing fine in quarantine.
Hopefully Gembar will soon be able to join the other babies in the forest enclosure |
Gembar is the name of the second baby, aged about two and a half to three years old.
She had been in the
care of a family for one year. They were
out fishing one day and found her after she had supposedly been left by her
mother – something we know to be very unlikely. She had been receiving weekly
baths, and was let out of her cage to play once a week as well. Her diet was lacking in fruits and
vegetables, and consisted mostly of milk, rice, and fish. She is adjusting well and awaiting further
medical checks.
The work carried by
our project teams in the field is nothing short of heroic, and we are
frequently amazed and awed by the lengths they go to protecting and rescuing
orangutans, often putting themselves in tremendous danger themselves. Please show them your support!
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