RELEASED ORANGUTANS: THRIVING, NOT JUST SURVIVING!

It was a day for positive news from the post-release monitoring team in Batikap Forest, Central Kalimantan as the team successfully managed to track down several orangutans that haven’t been seen for quite some time.

In November 2014, the team was able to monitor Sif and Sifa for three days, the first sighting of them since May 2014. Apparently, two years after their release their transmitter had stopped working. It was good to see them doing well.

It is expected that with the third anniversary of the release program some of the transmitter batteries will begin to fail. Another female individual carrying her baby has also been spotted regularly in spite of no signal. While no positive identification could be made, the team suspects it was Astrid.

In December, the PRM team spotted Nopi and Nicky, two individuals who had been released in November the year before and followed occasionally for the first two weeks after release. However after being last spotted on 12th December 2013 they could not be sighted and the team had to rely on radio-tracking records to trace their movements. They were found 100 metres from where they had been released, far up the Posu river and the mother and son duo (then 4) looked healthy.

Boy, an 18-year old male, who had been released alongside Nopi on the Posu river, was finally discovered in December the next year at Monnu. We are happy to note that all three orangutans have now been confirmed to have made it past the one year milestone.
 

In the last week of January 2015, the team has had success in following Jane and Jiro, the first time since July last year. In the past two weeks we have also discovered Edwan, Matilda, Georgina, Charlie, Emen, Embong, Reno and Mita, and a group of four orangutans  together in one tree. The team could not work out their identities as it was too early in the morning and the implants had not started transmitting.

Notable radio-tracking signals also came from Mexa (first record since June), Ika (first since July), Mama Tata (first since May), Komeng (first since August), Mama Ebol (first since June) and Sarita (first since May).

While it may have been a long gap between each sighting, the healthy state of these orangutans is heartening to note; they are successfully reintroduced orangutans!