By Rachel Groves | Development Director
As well as rescues, the teams also conduct regular monitoring of orangutan territory to check for any signs of distress. They recently interviewed over 70 farmers to ask them if they had seen evidence of orangutans over the previous months. Not surprisingly, the most common time for farmers to see orangutan is during Durian harvesting season. Orangutans just love this fruit.
A total of 8 orangutans have been successfully rescued and re-released into the wild in the last few months. The majority of these were found in community farmland – in Sumatra each village has an area allocated as “community farmland” where locals typically grow a whole range of different crops. In these villages which border on forest, it is not uncommon for orangutans to stray into these areas, as they tend to be rich in fruit. Orangutans can still be seen as pests in these areas, as they will sometimes take all the fruit from one tree, so it’s important that people have an option to move the orangutan without harming them.
The team also responded to reports of a sunbear caught in a snare and released him back into the wild. Sadly these rescues are still necessary, so thank you for helping to save these unique and wonderful animals.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
