This 2-year-old male orangutan was found by a resident in East Kalimantan\’s East Kutai district. He is now in the care of wildlife conservation officials in Balikpapan, awaiting rehabilitation. (JG Photo/Tunggadewa Mattangkilang)
Balikpapan/Banda Aceh. Wildlife conservation authorities in East Kalimantan and Aceh have taken custody of two orangutans found in human settlements in two separate cases.
Danang Anggoro, the head of the Balikpapan Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), said on Wednesday that a local resident, Heri Sutanto, had brought a two-year-old orangutan to the BKSDA office after finding it loitering in his neighborhood in the East Kutai district.
“Heri happened to see the orangutan in the backyard of a local home there for three days,” Danang said.
“Then the animal was gone but returned three weeks later. That was when Heri caught it and brought it to us.”
He added that the BKSDA would hand the male ape over to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation for placement in one of its rehabilitation centers for the endangered species.
The closest facility is the Samboja Lestari center, just outside Balikpapan, but the BOS Foundation also runs the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, and is set to open a new center in East Kalimantan’s North Penajam Paser district later this year.
“We haven’t decided yet which center we’ll give the orangutan to, because the BOSF has said that it is currently over capacity,” Danang said.
Ramadhani, the Kalimantan manager for the Center for Orangutan Protection, said the number of cases of the endangered apes straying into human settlements was increasing as they were gradually driven out of their natural habitat by the clearing of forests.
He said the highest number of cases were in Kutai Kartanegara and East Kutai districts, where local authorities have issued a large number of forest-clearing concessions to oil palm plantation, logging and mining companies.
“We’re constantly looking out for orangutans being held captive by residents, particularly in these two districts,” he said.
“There are several such cases that we know of, but there have been no efforts by the authorities yet to seize the animals.”
In Aceh, meanwhile, the provincial BKSDA confiscated an ill orangutan being held at an amusement park in the district of Aceh Besar.
Anom Zamora, the Aceh BKSDA chief, said on Wednesday that the animal, also a two-year-old male, was seized on Tuesday after the owners of the amusement park initially refused to hand it over to wildlife conservation authorities.
“We had to remind them that it was illegal for them to be in possession of an endangered species,” he said.
“We also explained that the animal was sick and that there was a chance that it could pass on the disease to humans.”
Anom said the orangutan appeared weak and that BKSDA veterinarians had put it on a carefully monitored diet to help it recover.
After making a noticeable recovery by Wednesday morning, BKSDA officials decided to move the animal to the quarantine center of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program in Sibolangit, North Sumatra.
“The facilities and veterinarians there are better able to give him the intensive treatment that he needs,” Anom said, adding that the plan was that once the orangutan had made a full recovery, it would be placed into the SOCP’s orangutan reintroduction in Aceh Besar for eventual release back into the wild.
The SOCP has released a total of 37 orangutans from its reintroduction center in Aceh Besar and another 150 from another center in Jambi province.
Anom said that seizure of the orangutan on Tuesday was the third such case in the past month in Aceh. In late March, the BKSDA and the SOCP conducted a joint raid to free two juvenile orangutans, a male and a female, being held captive by villagers in Nagan Raya district.
Taken from: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news
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