Deforestation is continuing to put orangutans in terrible danger. Orangutans are slaughtered as land is cleared, and their stolen infants become victims of the illegal pet trade. This is what happened to Monti who was rescued by our friends at International Animal Rescue (IAR) in 2009. Monti was stolen from her mother as a tiny infant and kept as an illegal pet in squalid conditions. She was malnourished, ill and trembling when she was rescued, and she needed urgent round-the-clock care.
When she started at Infant jungle school, Monti found it hard to mix with the other orangutans and relied heavily on her carers for comfort and reassurance. This new world must have been very unnerving for her, but little did she know how incredible her journey was about to become.
The team at the rescue centre worked tirelessly to teach Monti not only the essential skills needed for survival in the wild, but to also become comfortable around other orangutans. After many years of care and rehabilitation, things started to click into place and Monti began to show natural orangutan behaviours. The team also noticed she was very kind to the younger orangutans, and would often go out of her way to teach them some of her newly learned skills. The team realised Monti would be a fantastic candidate for a new surrogacy program. This program aimed to match older female orangutans with orphaned babies who were in need of dedicated love and care.
Monti was matched with a young, orphaned female baby named Anggun, and they quickly developed a close and very loving bond. The IAR team watched in amazement as Monti taught Anggun how to open coconuts, peel fruit and build their nightly nests. Little Anggun was nurtured and cared for by Monti all day, and every evening was nursed to sleep, snuggled securely in her arms, or lying flat on her adopted mother’s belly. When the team decided both mother and daughter were ready to move onto one of IAR’s rehabilitation islands (funded by The Orangutan Project) the pair were of course inseparable and Anggun learnt an abundance of new forest survival skills on the island, guided by her dedicated adopted mother, Monti.
Eventually, it was decided that the adopted mother and daughter were ready to be released together, to start a new life in the Indonesian rainforest. On 11 February 2020, Monti and Anggun were released back into the wild, alongside three other orangutan friends. Words cannot describe how beautiful the moment was when Monti climbed out of the transport crate, with Anggun clinging to her side, and realised they were completely free! Just look at how happy they look together.
This amazing story was only made possible thanks to the generosity of our orangutan adopters. This is because when you become an orangutan adopter, you support the urgent rescues that save orangutans like Monti and Anggun, and you become their lifeline of support. You make sure they receive 24 hour care when they are tiny, you make sure they receive urgent medical care when they are ill and you provide them with years of jungle school and rehabilitation.
Best of all - you open new doors of opportunity for ex-captive orangutans. You provide them with opportunities to mix with other orangutans, and form new kinships, so they can be released into highly protected rainforest and go on to secure the survival of their species. And, because we pool the donations of our orangutan adopters so we can support as many orphaned and displaced orangutans as we can - you only need to donate a small monthly sum to create this profound change!
Today, Monti and Anggun are enjoying their freedom in the protected wild, but there are so many more orphaned, displaced and stolen orangutans who urgently need your help. Please click below and become a much needed adopted parent to a Critically Endangered orphaned orangutan like Monti. Your love will make a profound difference.
Share this beautiful story...
More about our Rescue, Release and Rehabilitation programmes
Despite its highest protection status in Indonesia, orangutans are not well protected from crime. Forest clearing to make way for oil palm plantations, mining, agriculture, logging concessions and population expansion has created the greatest threat to the survival of the orangutan. Habitat destruction has decimated orangutan populations over the last decade. The Orangutan Project funds numerous orangutan rescue teams in Sumatra and Borneo that are highly trained and skilled at relocating wild orangutans in high-risk situations into protected forest habitat.
Land clearing creates a myriad of other threats including poaching, illegal possession and the black-market trade. These rescue teams also undertake confiscations of illegally held ‘pet’ orangutans. Sadly, many infant orangutans are kept and sold illegally as pets in Indonesia. This occurs when the mother has been killed – usually because they are considered an ‘agricultural pest’ if they enter oil palm plantations to find food, since so much of their natural habitat and food sources have been destroyed. Infant orangutans are highly traumatised after witnessing the brutal killing of their mothers who they would have been highly dependent on for many years. They are then often kept in deplorable conditions as someone’s pet and fed inappropriate food.
Once these young orangutans are confiscated by rescue teams, they are taken to the appropriate care centre depending on which area they originated from. Here they undergo a full medical check and are treated for any illnesses and parasites. New arrivals undergo a quarantine period before being introduced to other compatible orangutans. It is imperative that orangutans at these care centres are provided with enrichment to keep them mentally and physically stimulated. Orangutans are highly intelligent and spend most of their day in the forest traveling and searching for food. If orangutans are confined and bored this can result in stereotypic and negative behaviours including pacing, hair plucking, rocking and regurgitation of food.
One of the biggest problems faced when reintroducing orangutans to the wild that have spent considerable time in captivity is their inability to be able to recognise available food sources, especially during seasonal variations. Wild orangutans eat hundreds of different plant species and they change their diet according to the season and food availability to survive. Orangutans predominantly feed on high calorie fruits during the fruiting season but must rely on eating other food sources such as leaves, termites and cambium when fruit is scarce.
Young orangutans at the care centres and training release sites are taken out for ‘forest school’ outings where they can develop the skills that they need to survive in the wild including nest building, travelling in the forest canopy and identifying natural food sources. They would normally take years to learn these skills from their mother in the forest, so the rehabilitation journey is a slow process. Orangutans develop at different rates depending on their age, temperament and how long they spent with their mother in the forest.
Orangutans are observed closely during forest school by orangutan trainers and their activity patterns of travelling, foraging and resting are closely monitored and recorded. Orangutan trainers also closely observe and record what foods the orangutans are eating. It is very important that orangutans learn to mostly eat fruit during the fruiting season to increase their calorie intake and fat reserves to help them survive during the dry season. Orangutans must also be able to recognise and eat a wide range of other forest foods including flowers, termites, bark and cambium. Young orangutans need to learn how to make a strong and stable nest in the canopy. This can often take a long time to learn since it is quite a complex procedure. Often young orangutans watch and learn how to build nests from other more experienced orangutans at forest school. It is also vital that young orangutans do not come to the ground, especially in Sumatra, since the Sumatran tiger is a natural predator.
Even after release, orangutans are closely monitored to ensure they are adapting to full-time jungle life. Orangutans at some release sites have a small transponder inserted between their shoulder blades so they can be tracked using telemetry equipment well after their release to check on their progress. This has been a huge development in allowing longer term monitoring and assessment of released orangutans. It also allows the orangutans trainers to reduce the monitoring of the orangutan over time as they adapt to their environment. The Orangutan Project supports the post-release monitoring of orangutans at numerous sites in both Borneo and Sumatra with a particular focus on the newly established Sumatran orangutan population in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem in Sumatra.
Share this beautiful story...