BERLIAN AND AGUS

A couple of weeks ago, residents of Pelangsiran - a small transit town on the border of Kehje Sewen Forest - reported sightings of an orangutan. The following day, two members of our Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team, Handoko and Gunawan, went straight to the location to check it out.

Arriving in Pelangsiran, we detected strong signals for Berlian, a female orangutan reintroduced back in April 2012. She was hanging out by the banks of Telen River, not far from Pelangsiran. Seeing us, she quickly moved away, so Handoko and Gunawan decided to stay in Pelangsiran and plan to relocate Berlian the following day.

Three days passed, but Handoko and Gunawan did not manage to get close enough to Berlian to attempt a evacuation effort. Both had tried every trick they know, but Berlian showed no interest in approaching the two technicians at all. So Handoko and Gunawan finally decided to return to Camp Lesik to discuss the situation and seek some advice from the rest of the team.

On the fourth day, our phenology team consisting of Agus, Bowo and Jafar just returned from their monthly data collection duty in the southern area of Pelangsiran. They stopped at Pelangsiran to rest and saw Berlian eating fruits up in a tree. To everyone’s surprise, Berlian suddenly stopped eating, came down from the tree and approached the team. Apparently, she seemed to recognize one of our team members, Agus. Agus tried to get Berlian to enter a travel cage that had already been prepared by Handoko and Gunawan before they had left. But Berlian was only willing to enter if Agus entered the cage with her.

After several failed attempts, Agus chose to just carry Berlian on his back. The team feared that the longer Berlian stayed in Pelangsiran, there was a potential for human-orangutan conflict to occur. They had planned to relocate Berlian to the area of Lembu River, several kilometers north of Camp Lesik. However, no cars were available to take them back to Camp Lesik, so the team decided to walk slowly back to Camp Lesik with Berlian on Agus’ back.

During the trip back to Camp Lesik, Berlian was only willing to be next to or to be carried by Agus. We don’t know why she was so focused on Agus, but as long as she willingly came with us, we were totally up for it. Nevertheless, one-third of the way to Camp Lesik, Agus started to feel very tired. The 60-something kilogram orangutan was not easy to carry. She kept moving, changing positions and generally making it difficult for Agus to walk. So around the area of Muara Soh, Agus and the team stopped to rest a bit. But Berlian did not seem to approve of this plan. She started to whine trying to get the team to keep walking. She eventually got so impatient that she left them.

Berlian climbed a tree on a steep hill and quickly moved away. The team tried to follow her, but orangtuans can move quickly through the forest when they want to and it wasn’t long before she had left the team behind. They spent some time trying to find her but without radio tracking equiment, which they didn’t bring as were doing phenology, it was impossible.

So the team decided to leave Berlian alone for now. Muara Soh is also an area often visited and inhabited by some of our reintroduced orangutans so we are sure that Berlian will be fine, but we’ll keep an eye on her in this area. After all, Berlian is one of the first six residents of Kehje Sewen and she has been living here and thriving for over three years. We just hope that she does not decide to return to Pelangsiran again. Take care, Berlian!