Going wild: Release
After a long period of supervision the orangutans are ready to be released into carefully chosen areas in the wild. The release sites must meet a number of criteria. They have to be free from human beings. The forest must have been submitted to a limited amount of impact and there has to be diversity of fruits and plants that can feed the orangutans. The site also has to be in the area of Borneo that the orangutans originate from in order to avoid genetic mix up with other wild populations.
Once such an area has been found, the difficult task of getting the orangutans to the site begins. It is by definition almost always a very remote area. Helicopters or small planes that can land on nearby rivers have to be used.
Once the orangutans have been released into the wild, all that is left is to hope that the rehabilitation process has helped to make them strong enough to survive on their own. By visiting the area periodically BOS tries to get a thorough understanding of how the orangutans are doing in the wild. The orangutans must be lured down from the trees in order to take blood samples that will help determine if the food is varied enough or if they have caught any illnesses. Fortunately most of the orangutans who have been released are doing great.
It is always hard for the staff to say goodbye to an orangutan with whom they may have spent years. It’s essentially no different than saying goodbye to a friend. But it is also incredibly rewarding to see that an abused and often sick orangutan that was confiscated from a palm oil plantation can be successfully released into the wild so that he or she can live a normal life.
So that’s the rehabilitation cycle… we bring them in, try to teach them to be orangutans, and send them back out.
There’s one big catch: Without any forest, there’s nowhere to send them! So we have to protect the forest, replant wherever we can and STOP DESTROYING THE RAINFOREST. In the end, we’ll all be better for it.
