ARE ORANGUTANS EMPATHETIC?
It was a usual day at the Nyaru Menteng forest school, where young orangutans were learning from one another while their human surrogate mothers looked on from below.
In late 2015, fires raged across Kalimantan causing widespread forest loss and devastating impacts to wildlife populations. Tragically, many baby orangutans were left orphaned after losing their mothers and forest homes to the fires and our teams were out on permanent rescue missions.
Our Baby House facilities at both Nyaru Menteng and Samboja Lestari filled quickly, above and beyond our capacity and urgent plans were made to build bigger Baby Houses that could shelter the many orphaned infants coming into our care. We started with a campaign for a new Baby House at Nyaru Menteng and thanks to the support of all our wonderful donors and partners across the world including Orangutan Outreach and BOS Germany, we finally reached our target late last year! At the same time our sister organisations BOS Switzerland and BOS Australia, were able to raise the much needed support to construct a new Baby House at Samboja Lestari meaning that all of our babies would have new homes!
Samboja Lestari Baby House under construction
Nyaru Menteng Baby House under construction
Late last year we began construction of our new Baby Houses at both Samboja Lestari and Nyaru Menteng centres and the work is moving fast.
Meryl, Yutris, and Napri are just three of the 44 baby orangutans we rescued during the fires in East and Central Kalimantan. These three, and many others who shared the same sad fate, are now going through the long rehabilitation process to learn the life skills necessary to survive in the wild. Our dedicated babysitters at both Samboja Lestari and Nyaru Menteng are patiently guiding and nurturing the babies as they grow in confidence and skills for the next 7 years.
It was a usual day at the Nyaru Menteng forest school, where young orangutans were learning from one another while their human surrogate mothers looked on from below.
Our Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team at Camp Himba Pambelum in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park (TNBBBR), Central Kalimantan, encountered Suci, a young female orangutan, three times back in 2023.
Kopral has been receiving treatment at the clinic since April 2023 due to wounds on the sole of his right foot and fungus between his toes.
