There are presently 26 orangutans at the Sintang Orangutan Centre (SOC). There are 10 babies, 13 adolescents and 3 adults. We will be writing more about each one of them in the coming weeks. Please refer to the SOC section for more articles and photographs.
They all require help.
Please help us help them!
One of our newest arrivals: Molly.
Our first major project will be to help raise funds for an additional baby enclosure. Molly is a 3-year-old orangutan. She is originally from Central Kalimantan. Molly was, kept illegally as a pet for approximately 2 years by a family in the Tebelian district of Sintang. The ‘owners’ took her from Central Kalimantan, because the previous ‘owners’ owed them about 1 million rupiah, or approximately 70 Euros/600 HK dollars. Since she was still very young when she was ‘taken’ by this family claiming their debt, they just carried her away as they did their other possessions!
Molly was kept in small, dirty cage made from wood. When she got bigger, the cage wasn’t strong enough anymore and she managed several times to break boards and escape and run away. Each time she escaped, she would just run around the house enjoying herself by stealing chicken eggs, destroying rubber containers from the rubber plantation, eating young durian fruits, taking people’s laundry and leaving it on a roof or halfway up a tree! It is not hard to see that her sense of humour wasn’t very much appreciated by the people in the village. They continuously complained about Molly stealing and destroying their possessions. It is not a surprise that the owner was finally forced to give her up thanks to the local people themselves. We wish more illegally-held orangutans were as naughty as Molly!
When SOC staff went to meet Molly for a preliminary investigation (we want to make sure that the whole team of vet, forestry police and hired cars are not going to return empty handed), she had just escaped and was climbing in a tree. We noted that she already had surprisingly good climbing skills. In addition, she knew how to get her own rambutans (a kind of fruit) from the trees, which was just as well as her daily meals from her ‘owner’ consisted of rice and other human food, such as cooked vegetables, meat, and fish.
Molly is now in the quarantine enclosure at SOC. We are all happy to have her with us in an environment with appropriate love, care and consideration.
Left: Molly in her previous cage with the woman who kept her for about 2 years.
Right: Molly looking through the wooden bars. They used motorbike chains and nails to keep the bars together.
Left: The previous owner carrying Molly to the transport cage of the forestry police, who confiscated her, to bring her to SOC.
Right: Molly’s previous “home” for two years with SOC staff on the left and a family member of the owner on the right.
The door to (future) happiness open wide… Molly is on her way to a much better life
Molly arrives at SOC
The transport cage is loaded on the government car that will take Molly to the Sintang Orangutan Centre to start her rehabilitation
Molly has no idea where she is heading to but she liked the leaves and goodies in the transport cage!
Molly looking rather worried, but a new, much better life, is about to begin…
And as we write this update for you we received news that another much smaller baby orang-utan has just been rescued from a hunter who killed her mother for meat. The female baby orangutan’s name is Maya and she is only one and a half year old. Two of her fingers seem to have been cut of from her hand that was probably clinging to her mother’s neck when the machete finished the killing… We still have so much to do before we can say the killing has stopped…
This Film link (http://vimeo.com/111909811) will allow you to see the rescue work of the SOC team. The Baby being rescued, Cemong, is making great progress and has many friends. However, many more need rescued.
Please help us help them!
SOC Team
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