Aman hits the headlines

Our beloved Aman featured in the London newspaper, The Metro, today showing the world what fantastic progress he is making. Before his cataract operation in May last year Aman was blind but his eyesight is now fully restored and he's making the most of it...

"Meet Aman, king of the swingers and – thanks to a pioneering eye operation – a lean, mean love machine. The 20-year-old orangutan is feeling like a new ape after living in darkness for half his life. He's lost 10kg, toned up and chilled out – all of which makes him quite a catch in ape circles....." Read the full story on the Metro Online: Orangutan's got the look of Love

Or click here to find out more about Aman

Into the Enclosure

More updates on the sun bears progress by current volunteer Heather:

Monday 4th February

The time had arrived to let the bears out into their new enclosure, the decision was made to allow the less dominant bears Corrine and Jo out first to try and lessen territorial disputes. Food was placed on the outside ladders to tempt them down.

However only Corrine ventured out as Jo was still too nervous. Corrine walked around eating and licking up the honey, she spent about 5 minutes out not venturing very far but certainly not pacing and quite at ease. Her entry back into the dens was through Jo’s door and there was a moment of concern when for the first time the two bears met. Fortunately, there was not a sound they acted as if they had been together all their lives. Although Jo never made it outside a big step had been made in introducing them to each other.

Next Bernie was let out. He was still on his own as Situ had not yet been moved. He is the dominant male and when Corrine approached him there was a fight which probably sounded worse than it was, but thankfully there were no injuries. After what seemed a long time, but in fact was only a few minutes, the two bears were exploring the enclosure once again as if they had always been together. It was very emotional to see them finally outside.

I watched them wondering to myself what they were thinking and whether they were enjoying the moment as much as myself and all the volunteers that were watching them.

On Tuesday Sarawak Forestry resident rehabilitation officer, John Colam, successfully darted Situ and with the help of volunteer Belle, who is a veterinary nurse, and she was moved safely to her new den.

Bernie has been let into the outdoor enclosure to allow us access to their night den and to give Situ time to recover peacefully. The whole procedure of moving these bears to their new home has been amazing, better than could ever of been expected. It was done quietly and professionally with very little stress involved. I feel it was a very touching moment for everybody to witness these bears have their first taste of freedom and I know that all previous volunteers and staff will be thrilled that everything has gone well.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who made this possible.

We managed to catch everything on video. Visit our YouTube channel if you can't see them

Knocking out the Sun bears

Sun bear recovery

Sun bears see the sun

Heather

Sunbears Move to New Enclosure

Here's a report on the sunbear move to thier new enclosure by current volunteer Heather

It’s nearly a year since I first came to Borneo and finally 3 out of the 4 sunbears in quarantine have been moved to their new home. Situ a female sunbear was the only one who failed to respond to the anesthetic and has to be left for a few days to recover before she can be sedated again. The other 3 Bernie, Jo and my favourite Corinne were successfully moved without any stress.

They were sedated and then the vet allowed me to assist him with his health checks, they were weighed first and then he gave them a complete health check including a sample of blood to be analysed.

The weather was horrendous and in order to keep them dry and warm we transported them the short distance to their new home in a wheelbarrow covered in hessian sacks. One of this months volunteers, Bella, is a veterinary nurse and she was able to stay with all the bears while they were recovering. All 3 of them woke up after about an hour and surprised us all by being extremely calm and well adjusted to their new surroundings. They are now able to see each other through connecting grills in their night dens and it was expected that there would be some aggression when they saw each other but after a few growls of disapproval they left each other alone.

Once they had all recovered we left them alone to get used to their new surroundings in peace. Situ appeared quiet enough alone in her quarantine cage and all had gone well.

We returned Saturday morning to find everything very peaceful, I had been concerned that Situ and Bernie may have been distressed at having been separated but they were both fine and all bears had eaten well. Situ showed no signs of missing Bernie in fact seemed to be quite content on her own, all the bears had recovered well and once Situ joins them next week we shall make plans to let them outside into their new enclosure, it has been a long time since these bears have been outside.The vet and our resident Conservation Officer John were great and very professional it is a great relief that with their expertise all went well.

More updates soon....

Heather

Doris' Rehabilitation into the Wild

Doris is 7 years old female orangutan who has spent 7 years in various enclosures and cages in Matang Wildlife Centre. Though she had been released thrice into the rainforest, she returned on every occasion to the security of her cage and the regular meals. Her best friends during these years have been Sambar Deer, who share her enclosure, and humans, both those who are her custodians and those that visit the Centre. A lack of contact with the wild had left Doris wary of the jungle and some even thought she would never climb a tree.

That has all changed. Since the beginning of January, we have been employing a local Malaysian who is skilled in rehabilitation and together with other staff and volunteers, we have been repeatedly taking Doris into the forest. Some of these early outings can be seen on the video clips on this website. We have also started to introduce Doris to baby Ting San and Mamu, which has proved a great success and is allowing her to spend more time with her species and giving her the confidence to climb with them into the tree canopy.



We normally severely limit volunteers' interaction during the rehabilitation process, however, Doris is an exception as she finds the human presence a comfort. We therefore allow a small group of 2 or 3 people to join the outings for educational purposes.

By the end of January, Doris has been regularly walking 50 minutes into the jungle, to a ranger station where we hope to start spending nights outdoors with her. Simply getting her to walk so deep into the forest is a major achievement in itself but on the very last day of January, she disappeared off by herself for half an hour. After searching and calling we eventually found her a small distance away half way up a tree! This is fantastic news and we were ecstatic to see this. The fact that she has the confidence to leave our presence for such an extended time, and that she used that time to climb into the trees and explore her natural domain after only a month's training is very promising for the future. She is also regularly eating natural foods from the forest rather than bananas an papayas. This has been helped by our "Behavioural Enrichment" program that supplements her feed with fruits from the jungle so that she learns gradually some of the 450 different plant species that orangutans have been found to eat in the wild.



Doris' rehabilitation will continue throughout February and we will keep you posted with any and every significant progress.

January at Matang

Volunteers

January 10^th and ten new volunteers arrive in Kuching after a comfortable night at Singgahsana lodge they eagerly await their first glimpses of Matang Wildlife Centre which is going to be their home for the next month.

There are seven woman at the moment as Alex is unwell in Thailand and will join the group later and two men who all seem very nice. There was a welcome barbeque that helps let everybody get to know each other. The weekend is taken slowly to allow everybody to get over their jet lag. By Monday morning everybody has met the animals knows their way around and are raring to go to work.

Macaquettes

It proves to be an interesting week. A baby macaque named Rocky is brought in. He is very young and needs to be bottle fed, he is wormed and put into cage near another young macaque named Juan that has been with us since the summer. The two of them will be integrated together. Juan insists on Rocky’s milk but that’s okay as he is only young himself and will actually do him good as they get as much pleasure from the sucking action as they do from the milk. These two little monkeys provide hours of entertainment for the volunteers and also spend a lot of time grooming anybody who comes near to them. Volunteers have done a great job enriching their cage with ropes, swings and a hammock.

Also this month saw the release of two of the older Macaquettes into the jungle. Local worker Hilary and volunteer Alex trekked for 2 miles to release them into Kubah National Park.

Live food has been bought from the market and all the macaques have been able to forage for meal worms and they have also been fed live crickets, a local supplier has now been found to supply regular live food. All of the macaques are now given leaves daily to play with and this provides hours of enjoyment. Volunteers have been into the forest to collect fruits and a record is being made of where these fruit trees are so that we can collect them regularly and feed a more natural diet.

Sunbears

A lot of work is being done on the new bear enclosure. Holes have been filled in around the enclosure wall to stop them escaping and drainage has been dug outside around to dry the enclosure out. We hope that they will be released next week. Everybody shares my passion for these bears and are working hard to get everything finished as soon as possible

Leo and I went to the local market to get some grubs for all the bears and the four in quarantine were very interested I would like to make this into a weekly trip and buy enrichment food for all the animals at the centre.The new sunbear enclosure has been finished this month the volunteers have worked so hard the weather in the first two weeks was very hot and humid making the digging of a ditch into a drain back breaking work but with no complaints they went on to filling in holes with cement around the enclosure wall to stop the bears digging their way out. Then two platforms with a dual purpose of shelter underneath and a feeding platform on top were erected in the outside enclosure table like benches were made and put in their night dens for them to sleep. A paint fight ended the hard work when the walls of the night dens were finished off with white paint I think some of the volunteers had more paint on them than the walls but sprits where high as the job was completed

The work has been finished in time for the bears to be comfortably moved at the end of the month a big thank you to everyone the work done was tremendous and has meant we are on schedule for the release.

Orangutans

Mamu, who is now 3 and a half years old and unfortunately her mother’s milk has dried up. She was becoming quite seriously underweight for her age as mum had not been caring for her properly, so the decision was taken by Hillary, who has 18 years experience with the rehabilitation of orangutans, that the best thing to do was to remove her from her mother and introduce her to Ting San. This has worked very well with very little stress shown from mother or baby in fact after two or three days.

Mamu has come on leaps and bounds and the weight gain is visible she enjoys the company of Ting San as they now sleep together or at least they try to sleep after all the play fighting it wont be long before she will be joining Ting San on her daily trips to the forest.

Chiam, Mamus mother was back to playing tug of war games with an old piece of rope with one of the volunteers. She has also been copying the construction workers that are building a new orangutan cage in front of her enclosure by trying to dig her way out. She was covered in mud and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Ting San continues to progress well with her daily forest trips spending more and more time in the trees, and is now having a very good knowledge of the fruiting trees within her area. She has been integrated with Mamu, who was separated from her mother Chiam, after losing a lot of weight. Ting San and Mamu play together every night in a joint night den and they are both benefiting from this time together.

Doris continues to go into the forest and was happy to follow our local rehabilitator Hillary into the forest. She is also having good enrichment in the forest. Doris has taken her first steps to freedom by being taken most days into the forest to join Ting San at the platform area. On the 14^th January she was taken by Hilary and Guillaume to Sungai Buloh rangers station about a 50 minute walk away she has done this trip several times now and is appears very relaxed. She is still not climbing trees on a regular basis but has attempted climbing on a couple of occasions, she is extremely happy to swing through the man made ropes at the platform often copying Ting San

Husbandry and enrichment has also been a big part of this months accomplishments volunteers have spent a lot of time jet washing Chiam , Ganti’s and Aman’s enclosure and leaves have played a large part in keeping them amused in as near as possible natural way without providing them with toys, they also use the leaves to shelter from the rain and sun.

Contractors have been here all month building a cage for a male orangutan coming to Matang from Bukkitt Merah vey soon. Chiam has enjoyed watching their hard labour and copying their work.

Wild Cats

Volunteers have been giving dried fish and rice balls mixed with tuna they have enjoyed this.

Veterinary Clinic

Three volunteers spent 2 days cleaning and re-organising the unused vet clinic in preparation for when a new vet is employed, all the equipment has been cleaned and itemised and a new computer donated by Way out Experiences has been installed

A very big thank you for to all the volunteers for their hard work this month

Heather Roberts (current volunteer at Matang)

Please visit my websit to find out more: Heathers Borneo Diary

Doris in a tree after 3 days!

It’s only a quick visit to the tree but it is her first – this is massive progress for an orangutan her age and it’s only her 3^rd day of rehabilitation and visiting the jungle. We were expecting it to be a month before she got this far.

To start off with we had trouble getting Doris to let go of me so the two other keepers, Hilary and Jugah, moved to the second feeding platform to tempt her with coconut…but this is quickly spotted by Ting San.

After an hour of me ignoring her and Jugah calling her we had a break through and Doris touched her first tree. After this Hilary prepared some more bait so we could take this into the trees ourselves. After watching me up a tree for a long time and thinking about it she watches Hilary go up too and then amazingly she climbs a series of ropes up into her first tree and is high off the ground.

She comes back down for reassurance and although only a short visit this progress is huge.

Keep your eye for glimpses of Ting San whose happily plays whilst we tempt Doris.

Watch the videos here:

Or visit our Orangutan Project Channel on YouTube

Leo

Doris' Jungle Training Day One

The most exciting thing to happen this month….

…..Doris took the first of several journeys into the jungle!

We’ve started ta snippet of some of the videos we took on the first day to the site

A word of caution before you watch though, don’t be expecting a free Willy or born free moment. Rehabilitation of orangutan is a notoriously labour intensive project; Doris doesn’t make a bolt for the first tree she sees and brachiate smoothly off to freedom….
In fact we’re not even successful in getting her to let go of us. What you’ll see is the very first baby step in getting her out and into the treeline; after 7 years, for Doris, it is an amazingly big one.

What will follow is hopefully weeks rather than months of getting her to acclimatize to what for her is an alien environment and grow in confidence; untill Hillary and Jugah can teach her what she needs to know.

I only found out as we sat on the platform that even as an infant the keepers were never able to get Doris away from the centre & on subsequent attempts we haven’t always been able to get her as far as we did the first time. However from now on every day Doris will be going out and even if to start with it is only for a single minute and a single yard into the jungle as long as in a week’s time we can make it two, rehabilitation is a step closer.

A lot of people have told us in the past that they do not think Doris can be rehabilitated, that it will be too hard, as she’s too old and too human-centric and I’ve always categorically refused to accept this. I’ve never based my rebuttal on scientific expertise or experience (though I pay them close heed) but on something older than science. Anyone that has met me will know I have a bit of a soft spot for Doris and that she was the first orangutan I connected with when I came to Borneo.

I see Doris’ wings and for all the pleasure it brings me to be around her it pains me daily to know that they’ve been prematurely clipped by captivity. With forestry’s finest, Hillary, her lifelong friend, Jugah, and with the continued funding & indefatigable help volunteers bring I would encourage all others equally enraptured with Doris to watch this year’s progress and see if we can’t teach her to fly again.

Personally I was so lucky to have been a part of that first day, we wanted Jugah to take her up as he is to be her mentor, but when they tried the day before and a few times that morning the centre was too busy with visitors or Doris was just too shy to come out.

It was chance that kept me delayed at a meeting all morning and luck in later passing a man on the road selling (expensive) durian. Chance and luck together brought me Alvin and Eddie to that platform to try one last time for the day at a time Doris when was ready to go and I’m honored to have been in her company for this event.

Tempting Doris out of her Enclosure

At the feeding platform

Ting San plays whilst Doris is busy eating

Doris eating a durian

Doris decides to go back to the centre

If you cant see the videos click here

Thank you to all our past volunteers, without who this amazing progress would not have been possible.

Leo