As no doubt you are aware, internet connection is not the best at Samboja. We do encourage our volunteers to send through pictures as often as they can, so apologies to those of you who follow this blog and have been starved of new images recently!


A view of the Samboja Lestari grounds


Samboja is home to over 50 sunbears. As a volunteer you may be involved in preparing enrichment to encourage more natural behaviour from the sunbears.


Preparing orangutan enrichment. Enrichment is a vital part of these orangutans daily routine. Encouraging natural behaviour and making their day more interesting.


Orangutan Island - just one of the Islands that are home to these beautiful creatures.


One of our volunteers working hard on construction.


One of our volunteers securing a newly made hammock to one of the holding cages.

If securing the future of orangutans is something you wish to be part of then why not volunteer with us?...... we will help make your dreams come true.

Labels: dream, dream team, orangutan, orangutan enrichment, orangutan island, orangutan rehabilitation centre, samboja lestari

Wondering how the Dream Team are finding their feet? Here's some news from Nic and Rob...

Samboja is a massive reforested area of fruiting trees and rainforest species and is soooooo beautiful. We stay in a lodge in the centre of the area and the bit where we sit to eat is high up and looks out over the area. There are 6 islands directly below the lodge, 3 of which are inhabited by some orangutans, 3 of which we have the job of getting ready for orangs. There is a workshop, a vet clinic, several sun bear enclosures in one area, that are being workied on by an austrailian group of volunteers for 2 weeks, a forest school that is well out of the centre where people are, quarentine area where alot of the hep b and tb orangs are held, and some huge cage/enclosures holding the remainding 150 orangs that are out of bounds to anyone except the keepers for health reasons, so we dont pass anything to them! the orangs on the island seem mighty interested whenever we are working at the workshop area, and one big male (Leo, heeheee, ) likes to watch us working on the islands. The orangs range from tiny babaies to big mature males, and our main aim alongside getting the islands ready, is getting enrichment in place.

The keepers are sooo lovely and friendly and always join in with us working, alot of the time joining in means laughing hystercally at us or each other, which is amusing, think they think we are crazy! One of the young vets is amazing at english, says he learnt it all from forest gump, and totally gets our sense of humour so we have a lot of fun with him, it is amazing to see their passion and love of the animals, as ever it is the politics of trying to do this kind of work that holds them back.

We get fed 3 tims a day and it is yum, though sometimes you just want to eat crap, but being an hour from a town by car, we are forced to be healthier, or buy up all junk food in balikpapen each time we have to come in to buy building materials!!

Work is slow, trying to get the go ahead for anything we do, but the staff are enthusiastic, and we have spent our first few days clearing the islands we need to work on and making fire hose hammocks, whilst designing structures and working out enrichment in lunch times and evenings.

We are enjoying our time and really think great things can be done here, just finding the time to do it all!!

Hope you are all well back hom, thinking of you all, huges hugs and love,

Nic and Rob

Labels: dream team, orangutans, rainforest