Name : Manfred
Sex : Male
Age : 1.7 year old
Arrival date : 13/03/2019
Condition at arrival
at the Sintang Orangutan Center : severe malnutrition and dehydration
Present condition at SOC : health
The West Kalimantan forestry police asked our Sintang Orangutan Center (SOC) staff to help them investigate information on and evacuate a small orangutan that was illegally kept in the village of Nanga Awin. Arriving there after a 5-hour journey with the project’s terrain vehicle the information turned out to be correct. In a simple wooden house behind the local church a small very sick male baby orangutan was discovered in a very small fish trap!
The moment that doctor Jati of the Sintang Orangutan Center encounters Manfred in the simple wooden house of the local Dayak hunter. Notice how small the fish trap is and how the baby has nothing else but sugar water
It turned out that the owner, a local Dayak, had caught the baby in a very remote watershed up the Kapuas river from the city of Putussibau. He did not give any more details, except that the forest there is still in a very good condition and he and his friends normally go fishing and hunting there. As usual they checked their snares to see if any wild boar had been caught and that is when he found the baby with its hand in the snare. He claims that there was no mother to be seen but there were long hairs of an adult orangutan there. The Dayaks know about several people having been jailed for killing and eating orangutans as was published in the newspapers so they will make up stories. Almost certainly the mother was also trapped in the snare that must have had some ripe fruit in it to attract the wild boars. And almost certainly the mother was killed and eaten by the hunters.
The “owner” had had Manfred for almost three months when the forestry police and our team showed up in his house. The man had Christian tattoos and proclaimed to be a Catholic. He had basically only kept the baby alive by giving it water with sugar, sometimes water with forest honey. He kept the baby almost all the time in that fish trap as you can see in the pictures here.
When SOC vet Dr Jati took him out of the trap the baby tried to crawl away but ended up almost fainting at the kitchen rack. We should not have come a day later… The hand of little Manfred that still had some snare material in the flesh was treated that very same night he arrived with doctor Jati at our orangutan clinic in Sintang. Unfortunately, doctor Jati was not able to save one finger of his left hand and that had to be amputated.
The “owner” asked to be paid for the cost of keeping the baby alive, which of course was not going to happen! The forestry police finished the legal documents and doctor Jati took little Manfred with him. Manfred refused to be held but did want to sit in one of the other vets, Dr Vicktor’s, neck where he could hold on to his hair the way an orangutan baby hangs on to its mother.
On the left Manfred does not want to be held in the arms of our vet doctor Vicktor but he needs to be treated. Now he has a clean bill of health.
Fortunately thanks to the good care of our medical team Manfred recovered quickly from the severe malnutrition and dehydration. He is still very wild, not wanting to be held, but has gained much confidence as manifested by the tiny little cheekpads he developed at the center after he was put together with some other orangutan babies. His best friend and protector is Tom, another orangutan baby that is slightly older than Manfred. Tom will let nobody come close to Manfred, unless Eni, one of our Dayak baby sitters for the orangutans, plays with Tom first and then Manfred will join in.
Manfred always stays high in his enclosure except during meal times, when he does come down to enjoy the food, very slowly and deliberately. He is also already pretty good at making nests with the fresh branches our staff bring every day into their socialization cage.
Here is Manfred enjoying building nests and trying to figure out how to get the fruit out of the clump of ice. This is part of the forest school programme to teach all orangutans problem solving skills. In the picture on the right you can already see the small cheek pads developing; an indication that Manfred is full of confidence.
With a clean bill of health and natural behaviour we feel confident that Manfred will do well in the various stages that he has to go through before he can be released back in the forests of the national park of Betung Kerihun. We work with local Dayaks in this region and try to empower them to change their hunting practices by getting education opportunities and jobs with our SOC project. In return the local Dayak people help us prevent other people from entering the national park.
And here little Manfred from high in his enclosure looking down at the photographer. On the right you can see that he does like to be held, but only by other orangutans. In this case Tom is his big buddy and protector and the two are inseparable. They will jointly go through the rest of the rehabilitation process towards their final release.
A big thank you to the supporter, whose generous donation paid for the many years of care that baby Manfred will go through in our Sintang Orangutan Center.
Willie Smits
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