Hi All,

Some news from the Dream Team who are currently out in Samboja getting the project up to speed!

We are slowly being allowed access to more areas which means we can start to work on and improve the areas the orangutans are kept in. We started in the quarantine area, making hammocks and putting in ropes and tyres and preparing daily food enrichment, but last week we gained permission into an area called “wanariset”, so we have to start looking at what we need to do. Mostly building and installing hammocks and ropes. We also have now been asked to do the same in the holding area for the orangutans in forest school and tidy up and improve the play ground area for the baby orangutans, which should be fun!

In the quarantine area we have already installed several hammocks and puzzle feeders, and it is great to observe the difference, keeping the orangutans entertained and engaged in something."

A tired young orangutan with one of the BOS team


Dream Team providing enrichment to the orangutans.


More enrichment work.



One of the resident orangutans at Samboja.



2 resident babies at Samboja at play.


More photo's and updates to follow very soon.

If you want to find out more about how to join this project then please click here

Labels: BOS, orangutan enrichment, orangutan rehabilitation centre, orangutans, samboja lestari

Tom Makin, spent a month volunteering at Matang in May 2008 and returned to the UK determined to raise money for the project. In fact, so determined to fundraise for Matang, Makin is undertaking a 1000 mile bikeride across Britain.

In his own words;


"Follow me on my epic adventure to cycle 1000 miles in 15 days down the length of the UK from John o’grotes to Lands end to raise money for Matang Wildlife Park.

I spent a month living and working with Orangutans at Matang Wildlife Centre in Borneo and was completely captivated by the intelligence, beauty and fragility of our close evolutionary cousins.

Matang Wildlife Park focuses on the rehabilitation and release of Orangutans back into protected areas of natural rainforest. Those Orangutans that can't be put back are cared for and in many cases are used in breeding programs to sustain a fresh wild gene pool, vital for Orangutan survival.
This is a solo attempt which means i'll be alone with no support cars passing energy drinks out of the windows or cushy hotel spas at the end of each day, just me, my bike and hopefully a great deal of your support and donations to get me through the 70 mile per day average i need to achieve.

I have seen firsthand that any donations, no matter how big or small go a long way in Matang.

Please contact me for information on how to sponsor or donate"

To read more about Tom's efforts/donate to the project, see his Facebook page; "Follow my 1000 mile cycle ride to save Matang's Orangutans" or email him on tmakin@legionallacontrol.com. Good luck Tom!

Labels: cycling, fundraising, matang wildlife centre, orangutan, orangutan rehabilitation centre, orangutans, trip

Orangutans

Orangutans are such amazing creatures there so graceful, there home has become a prison for nothing compare them to humans they get sent to prison for a very bad crime these orangutans have committed no crime of the sort. But look at the people who are destroying the tree’s, which is making no homes for these beautiful creatures to live. We need people that have a heart for these creatures, we need people like you to go out to Borneo (Malaysia) to see what it’s like for these orangutans to have no homes and to be lock up in cages like prisoners for most of their life’s, if you were there how would you feel? Because the reason that the people are cutting down the trees is just to make some money and just to make us in the uk paper and there cutting down trees to make one simple little thing. So just take a moment and think how the orangutans feel they don’t feel happy because they are dying because there food is on the trees so answer this one question how do you think they feel? Tyiana Bailey age: 13 Your browser may not support display of this image.

Thanks reading my paragraph on how orangutans live and feel

Labels: Borneo, orang-utan, orangutans

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

Back-drenching humidity and high-octane animal sounds. Pushing through the leaves of a giant fern, a young girl takes two baby apes by the hand. The girl who saves the ape- it’s is a legend with which we’re all familiar. No doubt the myth has been embellished by a variety of cinematic adaptations, from Gorillas in the Mist to King Kong. It has been retold by cultures the world over, from the screenwriters of Walt Disney, to the Dayaks of interior Borneo. But like all myths, the girl-ape tale has truth behind its leafy folds.

In 1960, a 26 year old woman called Jane Goodall left her middle-class life as a secretary in England, to study chimpanzees in Tanzania. Fifty years later, Goodall is a household name, having revolutionised the way in which we comprehend chimpanzees and animal cognition, she has even redefined our understanding of what it means to be human. But Jane was merely one of a trio of women who changed the way in which we comprehend apes. Birute Galdikas is just as famous for her pioneering work with the Bornean orangutan, having set up Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting Reserve in Indonesian Borneo, a centre studying the behaviour and ecology of great apes. Birute has been instrumental in bringing orangutans to public attention; responsible for scores of high profile articles and documentaries in the last 32 years, she has given orangutans a very public profile. Dian Fossey is a figure needing little introduction. Her complicated struggle with Rwandan authorities on the well-being of the gorilla has conferred her memory with legend status, as well as drawing thousands of visitors to her Karisoke centre each year. But apart from the formidable team of Galdikas, Fossey and Goodall, the well-dubbed “Leakey’s Angels”, women have been formulating orangutan conservation in more understated ways.

Recent efforts at animal conservation place increased emphasis on volunteer interaction. Rather than ape survival being the preserve of well-educated specialists; primatologists like Goodall or Fossey, new release and rehabilitation programs are being being moved towards volunteer input. Yet the majority of people choosing to leave their day-to-day lives, donating their time to conservation are women. As Julie Ion, project coordinator for the Great Orangutan Project comments, “Eighty-nine percent of the volunteers signing up for our programs in Malaysia and Borneo are women, it’s phenomenol”. Indeed, visit the GOP centre in Matang, Sarawak and you’ll see women undertaking hard labour, building feeding platforms, improving enclosures for orangutans undergoing rehabilitation and tracking the movements of the released animals.

But how should we approach the interesting statistics? Is environmental conservation merely another area in which women will inevitably succeed, like the professions medicine or law? Perhaps increased female participation is natural, given the increased educational and financial opportunities available to women. Of course, this argument doesn’t go far enough, if women are being brought to further knowledge, why the specific pull towards apes? There are many areas in which women have not become more prominent-most mechanics are men and three alpha-males continue to present Top Gear. Women choose apes, dedicate their free-time and even their lives to ape protection. Why?

A traditionalist might answer that females, as nurturers, naturally have the patience and the desire to deal with species in critical danger. “Orangutan babies” may be the perfect outlet for a young woman to practice mothering skills, their vulnerable young faces drawing the humans most biologically set up to provide the vital care. But we must shy away from female-as-nurturer arguments. Looking at the profiles of the Leakey pioneers, or even the women applying for a place on the GOP program, most are well-established experts in their own fields; professional women whose intellectual rigour and determination rather than “soft skills” got them to where they are to date. In fact it could be argued that female led programs, like those of Galdikas or Goodall have argued for rational, distanced solutions to ape decline, requiring observers to take be at a respectful distance from the apes, calmly observing social patterns. In other words, females have advanced a rational solution to an emotive problem.
Indeed, Birute Galdikas’ answer to orangutan decline is sophisticated and objective. “In the end, the solution to orangutan extinction will be piecemeal: a patchwork of economic, political, cultural and social negotiations and compromises”

Labels: Borneo, developments, girls, orangutan rehabilitation centre, orangutans, progress, study, Tanzaniam, women

Labels: charity, experience, fun, fundraising, orangutans, sky, skydive