Since my arrival on the 20th January at Nyaru Menteng, the rescue team has been out in the field everyday. The numbers of animals that have been rescued is overwhelming for only a 16-day period.

Palm oil plantations and palm oil workers confiscations: 24 orangutans Relocated form Rubber Plantation: 3 orangutans 2 Unsuccessful confiscations from poachers

Below is a diary of events that has occurred on a daily basis. At first I thought the rescues would be infrequent, but then I was rather disturbed by the numbers the rescue team were saving and impressed by how the Nyaru Menteng rescue and rehabilitation centre was fighting to save orangutans from extinction. The men who participate in the rescues are amazing. They have to experience the most horrific images and situations on a daily basis. They are the strongest individuals both mentally and physically to put up with what they see and to deal with each rescue.

The rescue team arrived back during the evening of the 22nd. They confiscated a 3-year-old orangutan from a local palm oil plantation. The call came from the owner to come and collect the orangutan, but it was on a Sunday and they had to camp overnight, as it was a day off for the workers.

The next morning they were greeted by two orangutans. The phone call only said there was one orangutan not two, so it came as quite a surprise to see two: one that was a five-year-old and the other a 3-year-old infant.  The team asks what happened.  They are told, “We found the animals by themselves, abandoned by their mothers.” --The most commonly-used answer, which is also unrealistic. A mother orangutan will fight to the end to keep her infant and the chances of her abandoning a healthy infant is almost never heard off. The mothers were more than likely killed and the infants taken by the plantation workers.

The five-year-old youngster was released into a safe forest near by, and the three year old was taken back to the centre, too small to survive by itself.

6.30am - Hardi Baktiantoro, assistant manager at Nyaru Menteng is woken from his sleep by an anonymous phone call. “There are 3 orangutans in a rubber plantation in Dadahup. Please come and collect these animals before the workers find them.” With such urgency to save these animals from being eaten, the rescue team leaves for a 3-day journey to find the animals. We hope it is not too late. The locals will kill and eat these orangutans if found.

2pm - Lone Droscher Neilson gets a phone call to come and collect 2 orangutans from animal poachers. The Animal Planet film crew had just arrived on the docks at Mandumai where they had been shooting in the Mawas reserve. A poacher introduced himself and mentioned that they could film his private collection of animals. These included 2 orangutans, 1 bear and 1 gibbon. He would meet them tomorrow morning with the 2 orangutans for them to film. The film crew agreed to do this and automatically phoned Lone for help.

11.30pm - Lone is woken at her house by the vet to help her with an orangutan. A 3-month-old female orangutan was delivered by PT Makin Palm Oil Plantation worker during the night. The orangutan was taken from one of the workers at the plantation from another palm oil worker, and delivered with urgency to Nyaru Menteng.

The small female had been severely bitten by a dog. Her left eye was infected along with all the bite wounds over her small fragile body. Lone was up all night checking her temperature and feeding her milk. With a soaring temperature of 39 degrees, the infant was in excruciating pain and needed immediate and critical attention. If she weren’t in Lone’s safe hands, this female orangutan would have been dead in only a few days from a raging infection that was taking over her body.

8am:
I arrive at the Nyaru Menteng office and Lone brings the small female infant that had been delivered to her house late last night, which had been given the name Suki. Suki is wrapped in a towel and is given antibiotics. Her eye is green with infection, swollen and closed over tightly. Her right leg is the worst.  A dog was housed with the orangutan and had ravaged her small leg and her entire body. It was swollen and had deep bite wounds down the leg, also infected. Every time you would move her leg, she would scream in pain. The bites had also been around her mid waist and head region. The photos explain it all. Suki is now protected and in the care of loving people, but if she had not been attended too, her death would have been slow and painful.

Lone mentions that already this month there has been 3 rescues of orangutans!

12pm - Rescue team find orangutans in rubber plantation and transfer them into a safe forest.

1pm - Hardi calls Lone and they are unsuccessful trying to meet the poacher with the 2 orangutans. He has changed his position 7 times and now is playing a game. Lone asks them to return, as they most likely will not catch him.

The poacher, Mr Yusub, is curious about the BOS presence and he is also an experienced poacher. Several men in the surrounding hotels looked in the undercover rescue cars when they were parked and it is believed they reported it to Mr Yusub. Hardi meets with Mr Yusub but he mentions he does not have the animals with him and then changes the location.

2.30pm:
Lone and I head out on a 4-hour journey to Paringian SP5, a transmigration region from Java predominately for the development of palm oil. The region is owned by the PT Makin palm oil company. During our journey to the location, Hardi calls Lone and mentions they are on their way back to Nyaru Menteng, unsuccessful in finding and catching the poacher.

During the trip to Paringian, the land was completely cleared, only a few pockets of trees where the fruit was predominately grown. In the distance, a cloud of smoke where fires had been lit to clear the land even further. All palm oil development, nurseries of palm oil and palm oil monocultures. Not a single forest in sight.

Lone and myself arrive at 6.30pm at a house, where the family who called Nyaru Menteng had been waiting for us. They had confiscated the orangutan from a palm oil worker.

Not knowing what to expect, we took the large cage, in case it was a wild orangutan and also prepared ourselves with bottles of milk and nappies in case it was a tiny infant.
We were happily invited inside the house and given a tiny infant orangutan. A little female who was severely malnourished and very skinny, approximately 2 years old. The people who took her form the worker said he had her for around 1 month until they noticed it was not doing so well. They paid 100,000 rupiah for the animal ($8 US) to take it from the worker and send it to Nyaru Menteng.

Lone spoke to them to say it was not good to pay the worker, as he will most likely go and get another infant and want money for it. However, we were grateful the people had recognized that keeping orangutans was an issue and gave them some advice on what to do next time.

They explained that the small female would just sit on the coach and in the corner and not move so much. But we knew it was because she was extremely weak and underweight. When Lone held her, she just clinged to her, as though she was waiting to be held by her mother.

On the way back in the car, she fell asleep in my hands after she was given some milk. She had an excruciating headache and also was very dehydrated with a fever.

We arrive back in Nyaru Menteng around 11pm and that concluded another rescue for the day. The little female was taken to Lone’s house where she was in good hands for the night and then would be vet checked early in the morning. We ended up calling her Tullia.

The police surround the hotel where they think the poacher may be. Investigations into the animal collection that the poacher has are underway.

Our rescue team arrives at Nyaru Menteng, from the rubber plantations. It took them 5 days to go and rescue two orangutans.

Rescue team heads off with Miko and Tim, the two paramedics, to rescue 2 orangutans in the Agro Bukit plantation and PPB plantations. Both have an orangutan in each place which has been caught. The Agro Bukit plantation is based around 40km away from the town Sampit.

3.00pm - Rescue team arrives with the 2 orangutans found in the plantations.

A small infant clutches to one of our vets as the paramedics enters the Nyaru Menteng office. She is no more than 4 months old and has quite a few mosquito bites over her face. She is dehydrated and drinks milk impatiently as though the taste of milk had been so long since she had suckled from her mother. We hope she does not have malaria and so tests are taken from the paramedics to be sent off for confirmation. She had been given to the paramedics by locals who travelled upstream of a river on a boat.

Lone comforts her tiny fragile body, and it is there she goes to sleep for the remainder of the day. She is extremely tired and has had a long journey back from her former home. A fisherman had found Lara fallen from her nest and could not find her mother. So the fisherman called the Mawas office, where the staff then contacted Nyaru Menteng for a pick up. A kind fisherman had saved this small infant’s life; if he had not found her she would have died.

The other wild female orangutan is approximately 11 years old. The story goes like this: She wandered into the palm oil plantation, hungry and in search of food. The staff had tried to scare her off around 4 times and also tried to catch her several times. Finally, they were able to catch her. They bashed her on top of her head and transported her to a tree behind the workers’ quarters, bound her up in rope and left her there until the Nyaru Menteng rescue team came to remove her. The female had managed to untie herself from the rope and climbed into the tree and sat quietly there until the rescue team arrived. They tranquilized her in the tree and as one of the technicians climbed the tree to lower her down, the vet staff started to work on her wounds.

She had three fresh broken fingers and a burn wound on her right arm. The burn wound was almost healed, but it was not possible for the recent fires to cause that damage, it was too fresh. When the vets examined her, she had a cut next to her left eye, possibly when she was hit on the head, several wounds all over body, she was skinny and also had extremely dry skin.

She was given pain relief and antibiotics and the wounds were cleaned. On the way back to Nyaru Menteng she ate a lot of food that was offered to her. The veterinary team at Nyaru Menteng has named her Jessica, because the amount of animals being rescued on my visit to Nyaru Menteng on my visit.

Lone receives 2 calls:

1. The first call advises there are another 3 infants in Paringian to be collected. One is around 2 ½ years old and the other infant’s age is unknown. Two of the orangutan owners do not know that BOS is on the way to confiscate these animals, so two KSDA officers (Police officers) assist in these confiscations. It is believed it may get a little rough removing the orangutans from these houses.
   
   
2. There are another 2 orangutans that need to be collected in the Sampit region.

The cars and transport are a real issue and if we had more vehicles then we could be able to save all these orangutans. We hope that they are ok when we arrive, and that they are not too sick or injured. Unfortunately we cannot go and rescue the 2 orangutans that we received the call about today; the rescue team has to go tomorrow when the vehicles and staff arrive from the other rescues.

Time is the essence in these cases! I arrange with Lone to sty at her house for the night.

There are 2 infants on the way back from Salonek Ladang Mas and another 3 to be confiscated. Lone is going to need all the help she can get at her house during the night.

3pm - Rescue team arrives with the 3 infants.
Leggie (5 months), Kahim (2 ½) and Endut (1yr) are all infants that have been bought to the centre from the palm oil plantation. Lone hands me Endut while she nurses Leggie and mentions that there were many more infants at the plantation, but they were unable to collect them all due to lack of vehicles, time and places for them to go too. This is now starting to become the norm, too many infants and nowhere to place them. I am really worried about the future of these animals all stuck in palm oil plantations because there is not enough food in the forests and the orangutans are forced to the surrounding palm oil plantations because they are starving.

Both Lone and myself take Endut and Leggie to her house where they are fed milk and settled down for the evening. Both animals were extremely tired and Leggie was very dehydrated and weak. She will be placed on a drip for the night until she is better.

Kahim was the 3rd infant that was rescued and spent the night at Nyaru Menteng as he was a wild animal and had many scratch and beating marks all over his head. Too wild to handle him and he needed to be under supervision form the vet staff.

9pm - Vet staff arrived and placed Leggie on a drip. She was low in fluids and looked dehydrated and would not drink anything offered. She will remain on this until her strength is back and is drinking the amount of milk required.

Endut settled in well, however he was extremely gassy and bloated from the stressful journey home. He settled in well into a sleeping basket and had a drink and went to sleep for the evening. He was extremely tired.

The other rescue team which set out to remove 4 orangutans from the Agro Bukit plantation has only found 2 animals to remove. They will try and find the other 2 animals that have been reported.

1am - Tuta and Miko arrive at around 1am in the morning. Only with 2 animals as the other one was further away then thought.

Kamos is about 1 ½ years old and was confiscated from Kuala Kuaian. The owners did not want to give her up and instead they wanted to sell it to Tuta. The animal was housed in extremely poor conditions and was only fed crickets and a small amount of food for 3 months. The owners were not happy about the confiscation and placed a lot of pressure on taking the animal. Tuta tried to explain the disease issue with having primates and how it is illegal to keep orangutans, however they did not want to listen.

The second infant seized was IIT. IIT was slightly larger at 2 ½ years old and was handed over by the family willingly. IIT was housed in a small wooden box, where the family had to pry open the box with a hammer. She was fed through the bars of the box and also was kept in extremely appalling conditions.

Both animals arrived at Lone’s house, and were taken into the arms of the babysitters. However IIT was extremely nervous and wanted to be held all night, so I eventually went to sleep with her. All the babysitters were busy with the rest of the 14 animals at Lone’s house, and Lone was already sleeping with another infant because it was restless.

The past 12 hours, 9 animals were / are currently being rescued from illegal housing and palm oil plantations. Unfortunately Tuta and the rescue team could not pick up the 3rd orangutan infant as it was too late in the evening, so a rescue team would be sent later today into the field to collect it.

The rescue team that Lone sent out yesterday arrives back earl in the morning with only 2 orangutans. Originally sent out to collect 4, we were unfortunately too late for 2 of the animals.

The orangutan that Tuta and her rescue team left behind in Paringian last night was already dead and had been for a few months. The information received was old news. The second had been sold a few weeks ago on the illegal pet trade. It was a phone call to Nyaru Menteng, but it was too late.

We fortunately were able to rescue 2 animals though.

1. A small male orangutan approximately 3-4 months old named Tenjek.
   
   
2. The 2nd was a male orangutan named Temon, approximately 3 – 3 ½ ears of age. Palm oil plantation workers kept him in extremely poor conditions. However, he was healthy and not too skinny, but extremely depressed and had poor skin condition. He was kept in a small transport box at the NM project.

All three of these animals were from the PT Hutan Sawit Lestari palm oil region, Punduk

4pm - Rescue team that went out this morning arrived today with 2 orangutans only. The place that had the third was further away then expected.
2 orangutans around 3-4 years of age were relocated to the Nyaru Menteng vet clinic where they would join the other small wild infants.

Today is my final day at Nyaru Menteng, the rescue team that left a few days ago has still not made it back and another rescue team is on the way to pick up the third orangutan that was left behind yesterday.

I leave Nyaru Menteng depressed and extremely tired. So many rescues and confiscations. more than ever before. As the forest continues to be converted, orangutans are forced to live in smaller fragmented forest patches with little food and have no choice but to wander into the neighbouring palm oil plantations. I find it incredible that so many rescues have been successful, but how many orangutans are we not saving if these are the only calls we are receiving?

BOS is the only organisation that is actively rescuing orangutans from palm oil plantations. Last year a total over 200 animals were rescued. Nyaru Menteng urgently needs new vehicles or they no longer conduct the important field work in saving the orangutan.

The only two vehicles we use are degraded and after several costly repairs, they are struggling to operate in the field. The vehicles are used to carry large cages with rescued orangutans, transported on the back of the pick up bed, and are transferred to new release sites or the rescue centre. Many of the vehicles break down regularly and the cabins have begun to rot extensively and can no longer support the weight of the cages or the animals.

Because of so many more orangutans coming into the centre, Nyaru Menteng has no more money left to maintain the longevity of these vehicles and therefore important rescues and translocation attempts will cease if we do not resolve our vehicle issues. We call for immediate attention to this issue. It has only been 2 weeks and you can see the numbers of animals that Nyaru Menteng responds to.

We ask your support to help us secure a new vehicle via a donation of a new model of a rescue vehicle or a suggested alternative. Failing that, we would be grateful for a reliable second-hand vehicle. If anyone out there can help us, please get in touch.

As obviously not all of you can help us with a rescue vehicle, perhaps some can help with the costs associated with looking after these many unfortunate victims. It costs on average just under £3 a day to look after an orangutan or about £85 a month or £1000 a year. Won’t you help one of these orangutans to survive another day, or a month or a year? We must secure the funds to care for these orangutans and ensure them a future, and we are grateful for all the help we can get.

Please, help us to look after the hundreds of orangutans in our care, and to continue to rescue those that need rescuing. Your donation can make a difference.

Go here to make a donation today.