MONA IS BACK!

Just recently, Mona reappeared near Camp Lesik, in the Kehje Sewen Forest after a couple of months of us not recording her presence. Our last encounter with Mona was along a transect in the Lembu region, in July 2015.

On the morning that Mona reappeared, the sun was just rising and Bowo together with some of the other PRM team were getting ready for their day in the forest. Bowo was the first to spot her sitting on top of a kedondong (ambarella or hog plum) tree, observing her surroundings.

At first Bowo didn’t recognize her so he tried to identify her using the radio tracking equipment. No signal was detected, so the team then looked through all of the photos of our reintroduced orangutans and found that it was Mona, who we released back in 2013. Its not too surprising that we couldn’t detect her signal as the predicted battery life of the transmitter is between 2-3 years and it has likely now expired.

Not to let this good opportunity go to waste, we observed and recorded data on her movements and activities every 2 minutes.
We are delighted that Mona looks physically fit and healthy and spent a good deal of time eating the hog plums.

After feeding for an hour, Mona took herself off deep into Kehje Sewen Forest, moving from tree to tree in an expert fashion.

We were extremely happy to see Mona in such great condition. There is nothing that gives us more pleasure than to witness one of our reintroduced orangutans doing so well and thriving in Kehje Sewen Forest. This is the life they deserve and we are excited to be able to release more orangutans this year!