Saving the orangutan orphans Part 1
Monday Muse
August 29th, 2011
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Please visit http://orangutan.or.id to learn how you can help give a brighter future to the 612 orangutan orphans at BOSF Nyaru Menteng.As the world turns their focus to the causes and effects of climate change, deforestation, mono-culture of oil palm plantation and poaching; one often neglect the immediate victim of this chaos – the orangutan orphans. For many of these innocent young ones, their nightmares begin when they were just a few months old.
Witnessing their mothers murdered right before their own eyes; they were then forced apart from their dead mothers and thrown into cages to be sold in illegal wildlife trade. Within a short span of less than a day, these young orangutan orphans experienced the traumatic turnover in their destiny, where their home and only kin were being robbed away from them by another primitive species, our fellow human kind.
Unfortunately, for every orangutan orphans that were eventually saved, many more died as a result of injury from falling to the forest floor when their mother was shot; from contracting contagious diseases from humans; or from succumbing to the poor conditions in which they are often kept following their capture.
Despite the tens of thousands of the orangutans were killed over the past ten years, only 612 fortunate orangutan orphans were rescued and found refuge at BOSF Nyaru Menteng, an Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction Center situated outside Palangka Raya, the capital of Central Kalimantan. Many of them were confiscated from nearby villages or from illegal wildlife traders who smuggled the orangutans overseas.
In the wild, orangutans are solitary by nature and a baby spends its first 7-8 years with its mother. During these delicate years, their mothers teach them the ways of the wild and defend their home. Without their mothers at this young age, they have no chance to survive in the wild. At the sanctuary, the young orangutan orphans are given round-the-clock supervision by female caretakers, who serve as surrogate mothers. This close attention is required due to vulnerability of these young orangutans, whom like human babies, often wake up in the middle of the night for milk. Surrogate mothers will then prepare the milk formula that closely resembles their orangutan mother’s milk and feed them with a bottle..
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To be continued…
