Orphan Orangutan Rescue

On Monday evening our team in Sumatra received a report from a local farmer in Meka Makmur village, of an orphaned orangutan.
The story is conveyed by Putup (a RARE-OIC staff member); the farmer found the young orangutan in his durian tree. After hearing the orangutan crying, and searching for his mother, he decided that the orangutan was stressed as he had been "abandoned" by her. The farmer therefore climbed the durian tree, and gently teased the orphan to the ground. He then placed the orangutan in a small hut on his farmland before returning home for the evening.
The next morning the farmer returned to his hut bringing fruit and sweet tea for the orangutan. The orphan lived in this hut for a day or so until the farmer built him a small cage. One week later the farmer got in touch with Puput, telling him he had an orangutan and how he had come across it.

Miran from OIC was part of the urgent response team

That day we deployed two of the Human Orangutan Conflict Response Unit team, Rabin and Rudi, to verify this report. They joined Puput to go to the farmland where they found the orangutan and confirmed it is a one-year-old male. Within a couple of hours the team had removed the orphan from his cage and headed to an orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre.

It is important to remember that infant orangutans are highly dependant on their mothers for survival and development, they stay with her for at least five years in order to learn enough to survive in the forest. The care of such a young orphan needs to be conducted by a trained orangutan rescue centre.

In order to obtain an infant for the pet trade, the mothers are killed. It has been estimated that for every infant that survives the process of capture and transport, at least 3 others will have been lost, and each of these infants also represents the death of an adult female orangutan. We do not know what happened with this infant’s mother, if she was killed accidentally or on purpose. The one thing we do know is that she would have never voluntarily left her baby’s side, and she would have put up a fight if someone tried to take him away.

The young orphan is now in safe hands, in the care of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) at their rescue centre just outside Medan.

Here at the SOS, we are continuously fundraising in order to keep all our projects rolling. It is important to find more money for human orangutan conflict mitigation, as well as our ongoing conservation work.

There are many ways you can help fund our projects: become a member, make a donation, leave a legacy, or fundraise for us. You can see more photos from the rescue on our Facebook page.

Background information:
Organizational information:
The Human Orangutan Conservation Response Unit (HOCRU) is trained specifically to deal with situations where orangutan and human interests conflict. It is a collaboration between SOS, the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC), SOCP and the Government. HOCRU works closely with our OIC community conservation team, identifying current and potential problems and how best to solve them. All SOS projects in Sumatra operate trough the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC), and SOCP deals with all rescues and rehabilitations of orangutans in Sumatra.

Illegal trading:
In theory, orangutans are protected in Sumatra by legislation dating from 1931, which prohibits the owning, killing, or capture of orangutans. In practice, poachers still hunt them, mostly for the pet trade. In international law, orangutans are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), prohibiting unlicensed trade due to the conservation status of the species in the wild. However, there is a huge local, national, and international demand for infant orangutans to be kept as pets. The maximum penalty for keeping an orangutan captive is 5 years in jail and 100 million rupiah fine (approx £7,500).

Read more...

Elephant day out

Saturday was the big "Meet the Artists and Conservationists" day in London. We packed our bag full of business cards and headed to town. Luckily for us it was a lovely day, probably one of the hottest days this year, so Londoners and tourists alike headed to the parks for a nice picnic and day out. The turn-out was really great, we must have talked to well over 100 people, telling them about our photo competition, about what we do, about the plight of the orangutan and life in general. Hoping more people will start sending us their photos now so that we get a nice selection before the competition closes on the 30th june. 

Everybody loves Harapan

Even the Mounted Branch of the London police force

Read more...

Harapan, the painting

And the story about Harapan continues...

We have started getting photos from people who have visited Harapan in Green Park. We are hoping to get loads and loads of photos of you and Harapan so keep sending them in and we will start posting them on our facebook page in a couple of weeks time. For those of you that don't know, we launched a simple photo competition which is open to all, a couple of weeks ago, all you really have to do is go see our elephant in London. Anyway, the lovely Rebecca has just sent us a photo of the painting she is making for the winner of the photo competition. We here at SOS really like it and wish we could have a copy for the office but it's a one off only and will be going straight to one of our photo loving, elephant treasure-hunting supporters!

What do you guys think about it?

  

Read more...

Harapan spotted by CNN

Just a quick blog today to let you know that Harapan has been spotted by CNN and is featured on their website. 

We think he is looking rather dashing, you have to go to the CNN website to see his photo. 

Now we are just waiting for Londoners to start taking their snaps with him.

Read more...

The Elephants are Coming to London: photo competition

What are you doing this coming bank holiday Monday?

From 3rd May Harapan, the life-size baby (fibreglass!) elephant can be found in Green Park and we are launching a special elephant/orangutan competition!

It’s really easy to enter, all you have to do is go and visit Harapan, take your photo with him and post it on our Facebook Page or e-mail it to info@orangutans-sos.org and we’ll post it for you.

This is Rebecca Sutherland and Harapan, her creation. 

We want to see how you are enjoying London and the beautiful elephants throughout the summer. The winner will receive an amazing SOS goodie bag which, amongst other things, will contain a one-off original painting of the finished Harapan in acrylic on canvas by Rebecca Sutherland.

Use your imagination and send us pretty, funny, and creative photos. But please, be careful with Harapan so that he doesn’t suffer any damage, we do hope to auction him off to the highest bidder at the end of June to raise funds for our conservation projects.

The competition lasts until the 30th June; which is also the Elephant Parade Mela in the grounds of Royal Chelsea Hospital with Elephant Family Patron Goldie Hawn.

So make the trip to Green Park to visit Harapan and some of his elephant friends.

We look forward to seeing the photos!

Some more info about the Elephant Parade?
Harapan is a part of The Elephant Parade London 2010, which is a conservation campaign that shines a multi-coloured spotlight on the urgent crisis faced by the endangered Asian elephant. Brought to you by www.elephantfamily.org, the event will see over 250 brightly painted life-size elephants located over central London this summer 2010. Each elephant is decorated by a different artist or celebrity, ours by Rebecca Sutherland. The elephants will brighten and beautify the city throughout the summer. The elephants will be enhancing parks, street corners and buildings around London. Running from May to July 2010, this will be London’s biggest outdoor art event on record. With an estimated audience of 25 million, the campaign is aiming to raise £2 million for the Asian elephant and benefit 20 UK conservation charities. The elephants will be auctioned off by Sotheby's on July 3 and all the proceeds from the sale of Harapan will support SOS’s work in Sumatra.

The elephants will be sold through a combination of live, silent and on-line auctions, as well as pre-sales over the course of the week of 23rd – 30th June.

We will post a map showing you the exact locations of the elephants as soon as we get or hands on it!


Read more...

We have just finished picking the five lucky winners of the Facebook competition. Since we made it to well over 100 fans in April, we chose five people who won our Jason Monet designed T-shirts.

The winners are: Jane, Abby, Alexandra, Viviane and James!

 We chose the winners with help from a highly qualified and impartial friend!

So, Jane, Abby, Alexandra James and Viviane; please drop us a note either on Facebook or to info@orangutans-sos.org and let us know what size t-shirt you would like and also your first and second choice of colour.

Look how many fans we have! 

Read more...

We got there! £1000 for Rainforest Restoration Project

Thank you to everyone who helped support us during this past month.
As most of you may know we have been taking part in a special project competition on the GlobalGiving website.

Our aim was to make £1000 in donations from at least 50 different individuals, and it is with delight we can let you know that we just met that target.

Our fundraising work for this project is not yet over, as a matter of fact we still need to raise over £22,000 to meet our current Restore Rainforest goal, but now we will have the added help from the GlobalGiving community to meet this target.

Oh yes, and if we were to miraculously get another well...hmm... £1300 in donations before 23.59 BST tomorrow evening (that;s Friday 30th April) we would also win first prize in the challenge and that means an additional £1000 from the GG team.

We will definitively be keeping our fingers firmly crossed for that one.

Love from the SOS team
Read more...