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  Antara 13 Dec 06
Some 200 orangutans to be released into C Kalimantan forest

Yahoo News 13 Dec 06
Some 200 orangutans ready for release in Borneo forest

JAKARTA (AFP) - Conservationsts plan to release 200 orangutans into a protected forest on the island of Borneo after years of preparing them for a return to life in the wild.

"They will be released in the Baktikop forest in Central Kalimantam sometime early next year," said Willie Smits from the Borneo Orangutan Survival foundation. He said the organisation already had the greenlight from the authorities to go ahead.

The orangutans, a species only found on Indonesia's Sumatra island and Borneo, have on average already spent about three-and-a-half years at the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center where they have been gradually accustomed to life in nature.

"We are already preparing a camp where the orangutans would first be released and where food would continue to be provided to them for a period, until they begin to move out further into the forest," he said.

However, Smits warned that the plan might have to be postponed as there were indications that a super El Nino weather phenomenon was forming and likely to reach Indonesia next year.

"That is bad news for forests in Borneo, as the same weather conditions were there in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998," Smits said referring to the years when forest fires wreaked havoc on the island, causing intense damage and sending choking haze to blanket the sky in the region for months.

About 62,000 orangutans are estimated to live in Indonesia, 7,500 of them in Sumatra, Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban said.

But experts said populations are fast declining due to deforestation and illegal animal trafficking.

Antara 13 Dec 06
Some 200 orangutans to be released into C Kalimantan forest

(ANTARA News) - Some 200 orangutans (pongo pymaeus) that spent some time at the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Center in Central Kalimantan will be released into the wild in the protected Baktikop forest early next year, a spokesperson said.

The Forestry Ministry had given permission for the use of the protected Baktikop forest as a location to release the orangutans, BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival) Foundation founder Willie Smith said here Wednesday.

The 200 orangutans to be released soon were protected primates that had been seized in Semarang, Yogyakarta, Bandung and Sukabumi. Some of the orangutans were confiscated in Central Kalimantan, Smith said.

Most of the orangutans were in poor health when they arrived at Nyaru Menteng as they had been exploited for entertainment or private amusement, he said. The cages occupied by the 200 orangutans to be released next month would be used to accommodate 48 other orangutans which were returned from Thailand last November 22, Smith said.

The health of the 48 orangutans meanwhile had improved and they were gaining in weight, he said adding they would undergo a second blood test soon. The 48 primates behaved abnormally after they had just arrived from Thailand as they had been kept too long in Thai zoos, Smith said.

Hardi Baktiantoro, assistant manager of the Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Center of the Palangka Raya chapter of BOS, said on Tuesday the 48 orangutans refused to sleep in the nests prepared for them and preferred to sleep on the floor of their cage.(*)
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