Orangutan Calendar Auction

Own a unique 2009 orangutan calendar signed by one of our famous supporters, Sir David Attenborough! Sir David Attenborough, the world famous natural history film-maker, has kindly signed one of our calendars and we thought it would be fun to auction it on Wildlife Direct in order to raise money for our conservation programmes. The calendar features beautiful photographs of orangutans taken in and around Tanjung Puting National Park, Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo.

Please place your bid in the comments box below (starting bid £5). Bidding ends at 21.00 (UK time) on Friday 13th February. Orangutan Foundation will then notify the winning bidder who will make their pledged donation through the Wildlife Direct donation bar.

You can buy an unsigned calendar, which we are now selling at half-price (£4.95), from the Orangutan Foundation online shop

Place your bid now and remember it all goes to a good cause!!

Out of the office and back to the forest, at last!

Stephen’s just emailed to say that today he’s heading to Camp Buluh, one of the five orangutan release camps, in Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Hopefully early next week he should have some interesting stories to share. I think he’s relieved to be out of the office and back to the forest! Thank you Matthew K for your most recent donation we really appreciate your ongoing support. People might also be interested to know that Orangutan Foundation 2009 calendars are going half price at £4.50. They are full of beautiful photos of the orangutans of Tanjung Puting National Park. To purchase a calendar please visit Orangutan Foundation online shop

For those of you wishing to make your calendar that extra bit special then how about bidding for a unique 2009 calendar which has been signed by one of our famous supporters, Sir David Attenborough.

The calendar will go to the highest bidder on Wildlife Direct and the auction ends on Friday 13th (!). You can place your bid by leaving a comment with the bid amount on the post entitled "Orangutan Calendar Auction".

A Remarkable Encounter with an Orangutan

During the late 1970s & early 1980s Dr Gary Shapiro taught America Sign Language (ASL) to some of the ex-captive juvenile orangutans at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park. His star pupil was, beyond any doubt, Princess. The connection between Gary and Princess continues to run deep. Gary once said, as part of a sworn testimony no less, he had two children: his biological son in the US and an adopted orangutan daughter in Borneo.

Princess and her baby Percy

Anyway, I digress. I have my own Princess story which I was reminded of today and thought I would share with you.

One afternoon, a couple of years ago, an assistant and I were leaving Camp Leakey walking down the jetty to where our boat was waiting. I was carrying a bottle of water. Ahead of us, Princess and Percy sat on the jetty. As we approached, they moved politely to one side. Princess then very obviously made a fist with her thumb extended, and raised the thumb to her lips; the ASL sign for drinking.

It was incredibly touching and remains one of my favourite orangutan memories. There was no doubt Princess was trying to communicate with me. What is more she was using a human language, not her own. That she could remember the language after so long only shows her remarkable intelligence. There was also sensitivity in her actions; if she had wanted the water she could have just taken it. In the twilight of a day, which was also the twilight of my thirties, an orangutan asked me for a drink of water, which I gave her, and I sat next to her as she drank it.

You can find out more about Gary’s work at Orangutan Republik

A wild orangutan

Are you familiar with the concept of speaking too soon? Well, last week it worked in my favour. As we travelled up to Pondok Ambung Research Station, I said to my colleagues, “It’s been ages since I saw a wild orangutan along the river”. Literally, not a minute later there was this young one.

Adolescent wild orangutan at the edge of the river in Tanjung Puting National Park.

It was impossible to tell if the orangutan was male or female but its size suggested it was an adolescent making its first forays away from its mother.

The orangutan is right in the middle of the photo - looks like a dark bundle!

Can you see the orangutan?

Seeing any orangutan is great but we all especially love seeing wild ones, as opposed to the rehabilitated ex-captives seen near to the camps or in Lamandau. Anyway, I am now saying “It’s been ages since I saw a river dolphin….”

Kampung Konservasi January Blog - Sustainable livelihoods for communities living close to areas of orangutan habitat.

FISH HARVEST One of the alternative income-generating activities that Kampung Konservasi offers the local communities is low-impact fish farming. On Kampung Konservasi ground, we have three very simple fish ponds, which are – literally – just “big holes” on the ground.

The three different styles of simple fishponds demonstrated by Kampung Konservasi.

Because our ground is naturally “wet” (mostly peat swamp), we do not have to do much to regulate the water flows. We just worked with the land contour and designed our ponds so that they are as low maintenance as possible. This way, local farmers can easily duplicate our methods and feel interested to try because it does not require much commitment from their part. To fortify the walls, we used simple materials such as bamboos, sand bags and polybags filled with vegetable seedlings.

We then put two species of fish in our ponds: one is nila, a consumption fish species that originally came from Africa but has become very common all over the world; another one is patin, a local Kalimantan species that has also become a very common consumption fish species. Both have been doing very well in our ponds, although our patin grow a little better and faster in semi-peat swamp water.

Encouraging community participation and the uptake of this low-impact fish farming.

Patin - common species of fish found in Kalimantan, Borneo

Just recently Kampung Konservasi decided to empty its fish ponds because we wanted to fix the walls. We did not expect that there will be so much fish! In only this one harvest, we managed to sell 56 kilograms of fish to the local housewives and restaurants. In 2008 alone, our alternative fish farm produced more than 200 kilograms of fish and sold well in the local market. Once again, Kampung Konservasi have proven to the local communities that fish farming is another potential income-generating activity for this area.

Thanks,

Sally (Yayorin)

Who patrols the logging concessions?

A quick answer to Sheryl's question about David Hagan's blog Vounteering in Belantikan - Morning Commute , “Are there police patrolling this logging concession? Is there no plan in place to replant trees to rebuild the forest?”. Logging concessionaires have police on check points on access routes into their concessions, because illegal logging isn't just a problem for the National Parks, it occurs in many forms. The police, however, only monitor local people who try to extract trees – they are on the side of the concessionaire. It is the Forestry Department who monitor the activities of the concessionaires. The operator in Belantikan seems reasonably respectful of the law. In other areas the ‘legal’ loggers are less responsible.

Personally, I think our partners Yayorin (www.yayorin.org), a local Indonesian NGO, deserve big credit for the behaviour of the concessionaire in Belantikan. By simply being there, they are helping to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. As for replanting, there is a reforestation program but one hopes the forest there will recover on its own. The soils are more fertile than those we have in the lowlands and there should still be a crop of regenerating young trees left behind.

Thank you and more on the crocodile.

Firsly, Mike S thank you very much for your recent donation. Please bear with me I will blog more about orangutans soon but first I'd like to reply to Dana and Sheryl who commented on my last post Endangered crocodile species kills local man. I agree it was a sad end for this crocodile that had lived for over 50 years and is an endangered species. As soon as I saw the photographs of her caught and dead, I realised how old she must have been. The cynic in me is surprised she lived as long as she did. The pragmatist in me knows, as soon as she took the man, her life would probably be short. Here, in Kalimantan, for the people who live on and from the rivers or forest, nature is a little more redder in tooth and claw than it is for those of us who deal with emails, traffic jams and income tax returns. An eye for an eye – even between people – remains acceptable.

Even if we had been informed straight away, there would have been next to nothing we could have done. In no way are we equipped to deal with the capture and translocation of a reptile – especially one almost 5m long. Moreover, none of our staff could have calmed the crowd that went out on the hunt.

The crocodile had apparently been seen before. How, when and where has been harder to find out, especially in this case, when our questions inevitably carry the sense “What was the man thinking of? It is partly his fault.”

As with snakes and spiders, almost universally crocodiles get bad press. Tomistoma normally eat fish – hence their elongated snout – so people do not seem too concerned about them. That all changed when the crocodile attacked. By catching the right crocodile, we can hope no further action will be taken against other Tomistoma. Certainly, the attack has not unleashed indiscriminate slaughter of all crocodiles.

By encouraging Devis (Manager - Pondok Ambung Research Station) to write up this case we can hopefully understand more about the attack and learn the right lessons. Tomistoma are fish specialists but it should not be surprising they are capable of eating people too. However they should not be given the title ‘man-eaters’ but should just be treated with respect.

Apologies for the length of this post; complex and emotional issues can’t be explained succinctly. I am just happy I have electricity tonight, so I can keep typing.

Here's an orangutan picture to end on. I think this is a great photo, it was taken by Hugh Sturrock at Camp Leakey a good few years ago.

Endangered crocodile species kills local man

I am afraid orangutans won’t feature in this post. Unfortunately, I am writing about something rather sombre. On the 31st December a local man was killed and eaten by a large crocodile. A group of people went out the same night to look for the man and the crocodile but found neither. The next day they called on a pawang or shaman who has the ability to call crocodiles. He worked his magic and within 17 hours of the attack the crocodile was caught and killed; it was almost 5m long and must have been over 50 years old. Inside were the remains of the man.

The Malaysian False Gharial (Tomistoma schlegeli) that killed and ate a local man.

What makes this interesting, as well as tragic, is the crocodile was a Malaysian False Gharial (Tomistoma schlegeli). You may remember last year (A VERY RARE CROCODILE), Rene Bonke was out here studying them. They are one of the crocodile species never reported to have attacked people. Because of this, we need to write up the case. Devis, Pondok Ambung Manager, has been leading the investigation and yesterday we went out to look at the site where the attack occurred.

It isn't surprising Tomistoma kill people. What surprised me was the river where the attack happened. It was an ordinary, peaceful, black-water creek, not 15 minutes upstream from town. It was identical to literally dozens of such rivers that I have seen, been up, even waded across. Never once did it occur to me that such a large Tomistoma might live there. They are an endangered species and you rarely see them.

Being in that place, where I knew someone had died, gave me pause. But behind that was a wonder; a wonder that in this era of chainsaws, speedboats and wanton habitat destruction, an animal of such size could have survived for so long.

For more information about Tomistoma please visit Tomistoma Task Force

The cost of the biofuel boom on Indonesia’s forests

The cost of the biofuel boom on Indonesia's forests. The clearing of Indonesia's rainforest for palm oil plantations is having profound effects – threatening endangered species, upending the lives of indigenous people, and releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide, writes Tom Knudson from Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network.

This interesting and informative article appeared in the guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 January 2009. Here is an extract from the article featuring Stephen.

"This isn't mowing your lawn or putting up a factory on the outskirts of town," said Stephen Brend, a zoologist and field conservationist with the London-based Orangutan Foundation. "It's changing everything as far as the eye can see."

Like tigers, orangutans — which are found only in Sumatra and Borneo — are also being nudged into increasingly isolated population units by rain forest destruction. Their numbers are dropping, too. But because there are more of them — between 45,000 and 69,000 in Borneo and 7,300 in Sumatra — extinction is not an imminent threat.

"They are still going to be in the wild, but in fragmented populations that can never meet," Brend told me one evening. "And if it's reduced to that, we've just lost everything. It's not only the orangutans. It's what you lose alongside them — the birds, insects, pollinators, all the environmental services that forests give, as well as a thing of beauty."

Indonesia has long been known for its heavy-handed logging and plantation clearing. Rain forests fall faster in Indonesia, in fact, than almost anywhere else on earth. But Riaz Saehu, a spokesman for the Indonesia Embassy in Washington, D.C., told me that under the country's new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took power in October 2004, the era of widespread clearing for oil palm may be coming to a close.

"There is an effort to reduce plantation expansion," Saehu said. "What we do now is basically to promote sustainability."

Many scientists are skeptical. "After 23 years there, I must say they can talk the talk but never walk the walk," Lisa Curran, director of Yale University's Tropical Resources Institute, told me in an e-mail. "The richest folks in Indonesia are owners of these oil palm plantations, so the corruption and patronage are linked to the very top of the food chain and power structures."

In 2006, Curran was awarded a so-called MacArthur genius award for her work on deforestation in Indonesia. "Oil palm is a disaster all the way around for biodiversity if converted from logged forest or peat swamp," she said. "Oil palm is fine if they actually put it on totally degraded lands – but they don't." Read the full article

National Park Visit

I am sorry for the long silence – I had a fantastic break with my family in Australia. I hope you all had a similarly good end to the year. I actually got back to Indonesia on 9 January but had to spend a frustrating week in Jakarta; the traffic jams in the city are something else! Anyway, I arrived back in Pangkalan Bun last Thursday and, you’ll be pleased to know, I wasted no time in getting back into the forest. Yesterday, the National Park office hosted a visit by the Bupati, the head of the local Government. There was a cast of thousands; well 67 to be precise but the orangutans did not seem at all fazed.

Visit to Camp Leakey organised by the National Park Office.

There were lots of orangutans about including Tom who remained incredibly cool despite the crowd of onlookers. Even the gibbons came in.

Feeding Site - Camp Leakey

After everyone had moved back to Camp I stayed on at the feeding site as there was a new sub-adult male at the feeding platform. The Assistants tell me it is Popeye, the son of the wild female orangutan Peat. Ashley and I can remember following him when he was just an adolescent. Unfortunately, it was getting very dark and overcast by then so my pictures don’t do the scene justice.

There are in fact three or four orangutans in the photo spread out through the trees - you might be able to just work them out.

The day ended in a local village with a display of traditional dancing. All in all it was a fine welcome back!

Brigitta - thank you very much for you recent donations we really appreciate your support.

Volunteering in Belantikan - A Dayak Perspective

During our time in Belantikan we were also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have some long conversations with some of the older villagers about their way of life. We visited the ladang of Pak Taryom outside the village of Nanga Matu, to see the new crops he is cultivating with Yayorin’s help and find out how their new methods are bringing benefits to the area.

Pak Taryom in his ladang near Nanga Matu, cultivation here has been much changed with Yayorin's help

Pak Taryom also explained to us about the traditions and ceremonies of the Dayak people. His brother, Pak Maju, is the last man of Nanga Matu refusing to convert to one of the five state approved faiths of Indonesia and still clinging to Kaharingan – the traditional Dayak religion. He is also the father of Yayorin’s cook Ani, the youngest of his seven daughters.

Pak Maju lives outside Nanga Matu and, on our last day in Belantikan, we went to visit him at his ladang tucked away inside the forest. He’s 58 years old and still working in the fields. We found him sat under a tarpaulin sheet in the centre of his ladang, a thin line of smoke twisting to the sky from the fire he was sitting by chewing tobacco rolled in leaves, a rifle and a long knife by his side. I got a little perturbed at one stage during our conversation when he turned to me and mimed pulling off my head and drew his knife. Although it turned out, via translation, that he was just explaining that when a Dayak is angry they can pull off an enemy’s head with their bare hands without recourse to a blade.

Pak Maju - Nanga Matu's last adherent of the Kaharingan religion in his ladang

Pak Maju also told us how the villagers of Nanga Matu and Bintang Mengalih still come to see him and ask him to summon the spirits to grant their wishes. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that he could accept the end of the Kaharingan culture, religion being in his mind a matter of personal choice. He could not, however, accept the destruction of the forest. When we asked him what he thought of it he told us that the balance of life has been upset and ‘when the trees and the hills are all gone [to logging and mining] the people will all die.’. The world around Pak Maju is changing so fast that his fears for the forest, and everything that lives within it, could be realised within his lifetime.

We left Belantikan full of great memories. The work of the Orangutan Foundation, Yayorin and the local communities to protect this area for the benefit of people, orangutans and the forest continues.

Thank you,

David

Volunteering in Belantikan - Working with the forest

The Dayak people of Belantikan have lived with the forest as subsistence farmers for centuries and still it thrives. They carve out their small field (ladang) in the forest for cultivation and occasionally venture into the interior to hunt and gather other food to supplement their diet. However, some of their other practices for example, traditional slash and burn agriculture, unnecessarily destroy patches of forest annually. As the amount of available primary forest shrinks year on year due to the incursions of logging, palm oil and mining, it’s more and more important to ensure that the agricultural methods of the people living in the forest are as sustainable as possible. Therefore, Yayorin is working to introduce new practices for the benefit of the forest and the people, showing the villagers how they can continue to use the same field year on year. Introducing the cultivation of rubber, which takes five years to mature, means that the villagers cannot simply burn the field after they have harvested their vegetables, and this benefits the forest. The production of rubber is also beneficial to the people as it provides them with a long-term continuous income source. The vast majority of farmers across the three villages have already started to cultivate rubber, significantly reducing the use of slash and burn.

Rubber Training - Photo: Yayorin ("We do not have full-scale rubber cultivation. What we do is agroforestry with rubber as main plants. In the agroforestry system, we mix different plants in one area like vegetables, fruit trees, gaharu and rubber. This way, the community can enjoy the short and long harvest" - Togu Simorangkir, Chairman of Yayorin).

Yayorin’s community development and empowerment work is also helping the villagers to recognise that the long-term value of the forest is more precious than the short-term rewards that could be gained by surrendering their traditional land to those who would destroy it in the interests of quick profit. The benefit of this strand of Yayorin’s work was shown in June 2006, when the villagers of Kahingai chose to reject an astounding offer of 30 million rupiah per family to sell their land to a palm oil company.

Volunteering In Belantikan - An Absolute Pleasure To Teach

As part of Yayorin’s programme of conservation and community empowerment they are also prioritizing improving education generally for the villagers. It’s this aspect of the programme, and the communities’ request for English language teaching, that led us to go to Belantikan to work in the village schools. Living in Belantikan for one month was an absolute privilege and teaching the children an absolute pleasure. They were a joy to work with, keen and enthusiastic, and seeing them go in one month from speaking no English to confidently expressing themselves in their new language showed the enormous potential they have.

Class 3 and 4 in Bintang Mengalih after English class.

It was also funny to hear how the children of these remote villages picked up touches of our distinctive Liverpool accent in their spoken English, which might sound a bit odd to any future English visitors who stop to chat to them. The children also seemed to really enjoy the lessons, although some of their teachers looked a bit bemused watching their students dancing around outside class singing “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” or the “happy days theme tune”.

When we were leaving Kahingai after our last lesson there some of the children followed us down to where our boat was waiting on the river. We asked them if they’d rather leave the village behind and go to live in England and they said no. I think their quality of life here, living in this beautiful forest is better, I hope it remains that way.

Volunteering in Belantikan - The Morning Commute

Its 6:30 on the 3rd December and we’re on our morning commute to work. Our boat is cutting its way through the rapids of the river and we’re on the look out for crocodiles lurking on the banks.

Morning commute - the rapid at Nanga Matu the starting point for the morning commute to work!

On the river - mist over the Belantikan river on the early morning journey to work.

On this early morning a mist still hangs over the top of the forest-covered hills on either side of the river. All around us the forest still thrives, providing sufficient sustenance for both the huge range of wildlife and the small village communities that have made this beautiful corner of Kalimantan their home. We are on the way to teach in one of these villages, Kahingai, and it’s the most incredible commute to work I could ever imagine, but sad too to think what this might be like in five years time if the fate of the forest here follows much of the rest of Kalimantan.

Our journey up to Belantikan from Pangkalan Bun, one month ago, showed us what the future might hold for the forest here. Passing us on the road heading back to town were the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, all stacked up two by two on the trucks that filed past in a long procession. Further piles of enormous dead trunks, neatly stripped of all unnecessary leaves and branches, lay by the side of the road awaiting transportation.

Logging concession - destruction of the forest on the road to Belantikan

Rampant logging was only part of the problem; most of the journey out was through oil palm plantations, with the neat ranks of oil palm advancing into the former territory of the wild forest. The new plantation is a parody of the original forest, providing no home to the orangutan or other animals, and when the planters have finished they leave a land degraded that can never become forest again. If Borneo was once a Garden of Eden then what has been done to the trees here makes stealing a bit of fruit look very innocent indeed.

Oil Palm Plantations on the way to Belantikan (Photo: Orangutan Foundation)

We were fortunate enough on our journey up to Belantikan to have an unscheduled overnight stop off in a richer part of the jungle when our van, swerving to avoid a fallen tree, got stuck in the mud.

Our accomodation for a night in the jungle, a van stuck in a ditch.

The accommodation, on the back seat of a van sunken on one side into a deep muddy ditch, wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was amazing to wake up with the dawn to a chorus of gibbons in the trees overhead. We were also lucky enough to see a deer flash across our path to disappear into the trees on the other side of the road. We were still in the territory of the logging concession that envelops Belantikan, but in a relatively untouched part of the forest. A well-policed logging concession can actually be considered the lesser of three evils, and there are fears of what might happen to Belantikan when the concession expires in 2012 if the twin terrors of illegal logging and palm oil move in en masse. It raises the question, what will be left when the children we are teaching today have grown up?

Volunteering in Belantikan

The Belantikan Hulu ecosystem in Central Kalimantan is a priority conservation area for Orangutan Foundation and their partner Yayorin. The still surviving dense forest there is home to an incredible diversity of species, including the largest population of wild orangutans outside of a protected area. Belantikan Conservation Programme focuses on both researching and cataloguing the wildlife of the area and working with the local communities to develop ways to maintain their traditional lifestyles without having a detrimental impact on the forest ecosystem. As part of Yayorin’s capacity building educational programme Catherine Burns and myself, former Orangutan Foundation volunteers, travelled to Belantikan to work with Yayorin as English teachers in the schools of the villages of Nanga Matu, Kahingai and Bintang Mengalih. Orangutan Foundation invited me to blog about our time there and the ongoing struggle to save this precious part of the Borneo forest. You can read my account of our experience over the next week.

Thanks,

David Hagan

Thank you and Happy New Year!

Thank you Mike T. and Matthew K. for your donations in support of our work - a good start to 2009. We are delighted to begin this year by bringing you a really interesting blog from David Hagan, a committed volunteer of Orangutan Foundation and our partners, Yayorin. David and his fellow volunteer Catherine Burns spent a month teaching English in remote village schools of the Belantikan Hulu forests, Central Kalimantan (Borneo). We hope you will enjoy reading David's blog, which will be posted throughout this week.

Thank you for your continued support and interest,

Cathy - Orangutan Foundation

Orangutans and Holidays

Some months ago one of our readers asked after an orangutan at the Orangutan Care Centre & Quarantine called Roland.

Roland

Roland came to us on 28 July 2004. Today, he is a boisterous 23 kg youngster. I am sorry it has taken me so long to ‘track him down’ but every other time I have been to the Care Centre recently he has been out in the nursery forest.

This week I also caught up with Violet who continues to grow and develop with no hint of her tragic start in life.

Violet with carer

Violet

One of our readers, Mara, who spent some time with us earlier in the year asked me to look out for Maggie, one of her favourite orangutans. Maggie was not an orangutan I knew, but she quickly became one of my favourites too.

Maggie

Zidane (see post A Very Sick Orangutan)was out in the forest. Though he is still very thin he is well on his way to making a complete recovery.

And that ended my ‘orangutan time’ for the year. I am now heading to Australia for Christmas with my family. I would like to thank you all for the support you have given us, and the interest you have shown in our work throughout the year. I wish you all very best for the festive season and every success for 2009. You’ll hear from us again early in the New Year.

Many thanks,

Stephen

Reply to comment - orangutans in zoos

Amy thanks for your question. Without entering into a debate about the value of zoos hopefully I can address part of your question. Stephen is currently very busy but he'll hopefully blog again at the start of next week. The assumption should not be made that just because orangutans spend a lot of time alone in the wild that this behaviour must be replicated in captivity. How solitary a wild orangutan is depends on factors such as food availability or type of forest habitat. For example, Sumatran orangutans are observed to be more social during times of increased fruit availability. If the habitat allows a higher density of orangutans then social behaviour is more likely to be observed. If food is scarce and long distances have to be travelled then orangutans don't necessarily have the time or energy to invest in social interactions. Zoos often keep orangutans in small family groups, an adult female orangutan with her infant and perhaps juvenile offspring and this reflects a grouping that is observed in the wild.

What is certain is that there still remains a great deal to be learnt about this highly intelligent great ape!

Many thanks,

Cathy

Orangutan Foundation

The future of the orangutan - BBC Radio Interview

Here is the link to the BBC Radio 4's science programme Leading Edge which features an interview with Stephen about the future of the orangutan. Stephen recently blogged about it in An Interview with Kusasi. The programme was broadcast on Thursday 11th December 2008 and Stephen's interview is towards the end of the programme. Click here to go to the Leading Edge page and select the 11th December programme.

Reply to comments

A very quick reply to recent comments... Orangutans clearly recognise each other (Princess will always run from Siswi) but because they are generally semi-solitary and uncommunicative you rarely get the insight into whether there is recognition of a biological relationship.

Regarding the drinking of milk, orangutans naturally have a high-fibre, low protein diet with huge fluctuations in sugar intake, depending on the availability of fruit in the forest. It seems fair enough that orphaned, infant orangutans are bottle fed with milk made for human babies. Milk has always been given as supplimentary to the orangutan's fruit and it has become part of the rehabilitant's diet.

Abraham - orphaned infant

Tom - dominant male

Brigitta, good to know you still think of Siswi! Regarding post, the best thing to do is send anything to the London Office. I look forward to seeing the photos.

Orangutan Foundation 7 Kent Terrace London NW1 4RP

Many thanks,

Stephen