Nature Alert: APE Crusader, COP’s Rapid Response Team.

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

APE Crusader, COP’s Rapid Response Team.

I would like to share with you about the updates from APE Crusader, COP’s Rapid Response Team.

For orangutans, Agro Animal Park is just like the last stop before death. This park located in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. COP along with Zoo Association of Indonesia have recommended the government to close it down.

The owner confirmed that basically they have no enough resources to keep the orangutans but the Ministry of Forestry still drop them with confiscated orangutans sometimes. Many of them died one by one then.

Today, COP team treat Kenthung, the only orangutan left in the park. Kenthung is wounded in the fingers because of bitten by monkeys caged next door.

Seto and Revalino got out Kethung from his cage and checked the wounded fingers.

They sterilized and put antiseptic cream on them. Afterwards, they examined the right fingers. No open cuts but they looked swollen and purulent.

With help from animal keepers, Seto and Revalino enriched Kenthung’s cage. Firstly, they moved the monkeys to the another cages to prevent them from fighting with each other. It is not an easy job as the monkeys are very aggressive. Then the cages were cleaned up and sterilized to kill the germs. Then they enriched the cage with ropes and used tires.

They also add sticks and leaves, so Kethung can make a nest in the night. Finally, Kenthung has a healthier and better cage. Hopefully, it will help Kenthung to recover. The next plan is to facilitate Kenthung’s translocation to a rescue center.

While waiting the translocation, the keepers will give special attention for Kethung as they learnt much from COP about the concepts of animal welfare of captive wild animals and how to enrich cages for primates.

COP will supervise this work. The owner also promised COP to develop fences to prevent the visitor having direct contact with Kenthung.

Tonight, Kethung may be have a good sleep and have a nice dream: play in the forest with friends and mom. Tomorrow morning, the APE Crusader crew is going to the next city to help orangutans and any other captive primates.

Thank you for supporting Centre for Orangutan Protection.

Hardi Baktiantoro

The inside of Kenthungs cage being cleared by COP of plastic bottles, paper, etc. etc.

See below for further photos.

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.