BEST RHOI POST-RELEASE MONITORING STAFF OF 2015

Monitoring the released orangutans is one of the most important programs in Kehje Sewen Forest. The Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team is responsible for observing our reintroduced orangutans everyday from before sunrise each morning until after the sun sets in order to carefully follow the development and adaptation of the orangutans after their release. They need to make sure they are thriving and surviving well in their new forest home, which can be a difficult journey for some of our orangutans.

We have a fantastic team in Kehje Sewen and from the entire PRM team, Luy and Jafar have been voted as the best technicians by their colleagues during 2015!

Here are their brief profiles!
 

Luy Yan
Luy was born on November 15th, 1991, and is Dayak Wehean. He is the third of seven children. He feels true empathy towards orangutans having seen firsthand their habitat destroyed by oil palm plantations. When he was still an elementary student, Luy witnessed how confused an orangutan became when it lost its natural habitat, which led to the orangutan wandering into the Benhes Village, the village where Luy and his family live.

When RHOI was socializing its programs within the community at Benhes Village in 2011, Luy already began to show his interest in RHOI activities. He had asked many questions about RHOI and day by day, he became more certain that he wanted to leave his job as a farmer on his parents farm. In October 2014 he finally joined RHOI as a member of the Kehje Sewen Forest PRM team in East Kalimantan.

Starting work for us at Camp Lesik, Luy fell in love with his job. For him, being able to observe orangutans in their natural habitat was a gift from God and a priceless experience, and also cured his own trauma of witnessing a confused orangutan in the middle of a human settlement with nowhere to turn. Now, he loves nothing more but seeing orangutans living their lives happily, foraging for food freely, and sleeping in the forest under the safety of his watchful eye.

According to his colleagues, Luy is friendly, handy and reliable and excellent at leading the patrols in the forest. Luy hopes that BOS Foundation and RHOI are able to realize their mission of conserving orangutans and their habitat and socializing nearby communities on the importance of saving orangutans and their habitat.
 

Jafar
Jafar born on April 24th ,1994 is a natural adventurer which led to his decision to leave his hometown, Palopo, South Sulawesi, after graduating from high school. With the blessing of his parents, Jafar flew to Borneo to experience new things and find a job.

In Borneo, Jafar lived with a relative in Muara Wahau, the last regency before Kehje Sewen Forest. At that time, he tried his luck as a porter and helped our team during a preliminary survey to the southern part of Kehje Sewen Forest in February 2015. Through this task he had the chance to witness how exciting it is to be a member of RHOI’s PRM team and he decided that this is the world that he wanted to be part of, where he could learn a wealth of knowledge on the flora and fauna living in the forest.

In April 2015, Jafar, the fifth of nine children, officially became a member of PRM team. During his three month training, he was very quick to understand the instructions given by his team. He is a very warm, humble and helpful person greatly respected by his colleagues.

Jafar loves seeing orangutans and other wild animals living in freedom in the wild and he hopes that BOS Foundation and RHOI can keep rehabilitating and reintroducing orangutans to their true habitat. He believes that every good deed done for the sake of nature, people should always support that action. Now Jafar is more motivated than ever to keep his spirits high and struggle to achieve success in observing orangutans in their natural habitat.

We are proud of our whole team and especially proud of Luy and Jafar! As a token of appreciation, we will be presenting a small gift to these two technicians, who are now preparing for the 7th Samboja Lestari Orangutan Release. Great job team!