Wanariset

The rehabilitation center in Wanariset is where it all began. Now the project is situated within the Samboja Lestari project about 40 km from Balikpapan; the biggest city in the Indonesian part of Borneo. Today, Wanariset is the home of more than 200 orphaned orangutans and about 100 employees.

There are currently more than 100 local people working with the more than 200 orangutans in Wanariset. Besides their work with rehabilitation and release, the employees at the centre are also involved in the confiscation of wild animals that are illegally held in captivity, the moving of wild orangutans caught in small forest-areas where they would be in danger of getting killed by humans, the study of orangutan-behaviour in the forest, training-programmes, fire-fighting, protection of the forest areas as well as leading the Samboja Lestari reforestation project.

The ministry of forestry has appointed Wanariset to be the only rightful orangutan rehabilitation center in Indonesia, and the ministry of agriculture has officially promoted Wanariset as an animal quarantine center.

As a result of its status as quarantine center, Wanariset is not open to the public. Only sponsors are allowed to visit the release project, and only on Saturday mornings after having made a special appointment with the Station Manager and the BOS Foundation.

There are several stages in the orangutan rehabilitation process. Newly arrived animals are kept in quarantine to allow vet examinations, vaccinations and other kinds of treatment. Many different examinations are performed during this period, including check-ups and tests for TBC, Hepatitis A, B, C and E, malaria, etc. This period lasts from one to two weeks.

The quarantine facilities and the clinic are built away from the socialization cages to avoid any sick animals infecting the healthy ones.

When an animal is deemed healthy it continues on to the socialization process. The youngest of the small orangutans live in a nursery while the older ones live in the socialization cages. In these cages the new orangutans are peacefully introduced to other orangutans their age and size.

In the second stage of the socialization process, the animals are introduced to a number of different food sources that they would be able to find in the forest. Seeing as many of the animals which have been held as pets have only had food such as chicken and rice, they are in high need of nourishment which is best gained from their natural food sources. At this time, the orangutans also meet some physical surroundings which allows them to develop their survival skills in the forest, such as building a nest and swinging in the trees.

Orangutans that have been rehabilitated in Wanariset can be found in the protected Sungai Wain-forest, which is the pool of the Balikpapan-reservoir as well as the protected and remote forest-area known as Meratus.