THE SCHOOL OF WILDLIFE

TEACHING ORANGUTANS

By Meg Fulton, The Big Issue Australia Sure, they’re cute, but don’t be fooled — they’re rascals. No two days are the same with orangutans, according to Tony Gilding, president of the Australian arm of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF). The organization manages the biggest orangutan rescue and rehabilitation program in the world, including Nyaru Menteng, a jungle school for orphaned orangutans that teaches the animals how to live in the wild. “They’re good at foxing people,” Gilding says. “They’re clever in the way they can trick you and surprise you — that’s what makes them so much fun.” A typical day at Nyaru Menteng sounds more raucous than Kindergarten Cop. Among the orangutans’ slapstick repertoire is a refusal to walk to school, preferring to hitch a ride instead by wrapping themselves around the trunks of their carers’ legs. Sometimes they’ll even catch a wheelbarrow there. A few young orangutans are master escape artists, and the center has had to adopt an ornate locking system to keep them safe in their enclosures. “They’ve got eyes like hawks and they just watch whatever is happening around them,” says Gilding. “If they see a way of being mischievous that they haven’t seen before, they emulate it.”

Nyaru Menteng is in Borneo, Indonesia, and houses more than 400 rescue orangutans, most of whom have lost their natural habitat to deforestation. Over the past 20 years, up to 80 percent of suitable rainforest for orangutans has been destroyed across Indonesia and Malaysia — mostly by the logging and palm oil industries. Without intervention, some experts claim that orangutans will be extinct in the wild in the next 10 to 20 years. BOSF is doing everything it can to prevent this from happening. At jungle school, the orangutans learn all they need to know to get by on their own in the wild. There are lessons in climbing, nest building, foraging, and looking out for predators such as snakes. There are lessons on cracking open a coconut, and on which types of bark are safe to eat. The word “orangutan” translates literally to “man of the forest”. In addition to sharing 98 percent of our DNA, orangutans also have similar child-rearing practices to us: they typically spend the first seven years of life in their mother’s care, learning how to fend for themselves. The jungle school emulates these teachings as faithfully as possible with a surrogate human mother. It’s a rigorous seven-stage program; not all orangutans are deemed fit for the wild and stay at the center. “But without doubt,” says Gilding, “the most rewarding part of the job is when they graduate. They’re up, and they’re off, and they’re away, and they’re amazing. They just know that they should be in the rainforest — they don’t hesitate, they don’t look back, they just go up and they love it. Watching that sight is a guaranteed tear-jerker. Everybody cries.”

Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo

All photos by Braydon Moloney 1:Jacqui and Bumi make friends. 2:Meryl takes a moment to think things over. 3:Penti checks out the camera, Junior hangs back. 4:Velntino learns about the sandpit. 5:Wine leans in for a cuddle.