Take a look at the photographs of the male orangutan and of the mother and her baby. They are so beautiful. What do you notice about these animals? Is their fur much different than the animals you know? Do you think it is soft or wiry? How about their eyes? Do they seem to be expressive like our human eyes? How would you describe what you see in these photographs? Let’s find out about the life of these beautiful orangutans as you travel with me to the rainforest in Sumatra.
     I flew from Bali to Sumatra to see the orangutans at the Bohorok Orangutan Center at the village of Bukit Lawang on the edge of Mt Leuser National Park. This park is a magnificent rainforest and home to some of the critically endangered species like the orangutans. Living in the jungle are the Sumatran rhinoceros, the tiger, and elephant, that are also critically endangered. Do you know what critically endangered means?
      Can you imagine all of these different wild animals living together? How big is the national park to provide enough space and food for all of these animals to survive without bumping into each other or without someone going hungry? It is 9000 square kilometers. See if you can find the park on the map. It is very important that we humans protect the national park if all of these endangered species are going to survive. But more about that later. Let’s go on an adventure together.
    To get to the Bohorok Orangutan Center to see the feeding station, we must climb into a small wooden boat that is tethered to a line that runs across the fast moving Bohorok River. There is room for 2 or 3 people and the guide. The guide pulls on the rope as the small canoe surfs across the river to the other side. It’s very exciting and a little bit scary, too.
     Now safely on the other side, it’s time to head up a steep dirt path with lots of steps. It takes about 20 minutes of careful walking to reach the feeding station. As I walk I am getting so excited as we near the top. I can’t believe I’m going to see orangutans in the wild! But how did this feeding station begin? Why was there a need for a feeding station for wild orangutans? Well these orangutans are not wild but semi-wild.
     Bukit Lawang was once a rescue and rehabilitation centre to help orangutans confiscated from the illegal pet trade. All of the orangutans that we are going to see have been through the program that was once active here. But let’s go back a minute. What does that mean ‘illegal pet trade’?
     Sadly, some humans have an idea that they can steal a baby orangutan from its mother to sell as a pet. To do this they must kill the mother who will fight to protect her baby. Can you imagine what the baby orangutan must feel like being taken from its mother and forced to live in a cage as a pet to humans? How cruel! Though this practice is illegal now, it is still being done and there are still orangutans in captivity that need to be rehabilitated and then released to live in the wild. If you and your parents ever see a caged orangutan, please have your parents contact Mr. Ian Singleton, who works for SOCP. He will begin a rescue.
     So let’s go back to our hike now that you have learned about the illegal pet trade. Arriving at the top of the stairs, I hold my breath with excitement, my eyes wide open and I stay very quiet. On the feeding platform is Mina, a 35 year old mother orangutan with her tiny infant clinging to her body. She was rescued from the pet trade and now lives freely in the forest. What a wonderful change for her! Females are close to a meter tall and 35 to 50 kilograms about half the adult male weight. Does she weigh more than you do? Is she taller than you are? She is a beautiful reddish-orange color. I can’t believe her baby can hold on to her mother’s body. He is so tiny. He only weighed between1.5 to 2 kilograms at birth and is now just one month old. Pick up a piece of fruit that weighs 2 kg. to see just how tiny he was at birth. But using his fingers and toes he is clinging to his mom’s fur even as she stretches out and climbs around in the trees. What great grips these baby orangutans have!
     Orangutans are good mothers. They are pregnant for 9 months just like us but they only produce a baby once every 7-8 years. This makes them very vulnerable to any losses. Mina will continue to take care of her baby protecting it, giving it rides through the forest, teaching it to climb and how to find food, sleeping together in the nest she builds high up in the tree tops until her baby is 5-8 years old. What a long time this is for a mother to protect her young compared to other species in the animal kingdom.
     Orangutans rest a lot and build a fresh nest each night near a good fruit tree if they can for a nice breakfast. Can you imagine how strong their nest must be to hold an orangutan high up in a tree? They rise with the sun and go to sleep with sunset. But let’s go back to the feeding and see more orangutans.    
     The ranger is sitting on the platform feeding her bananas. Would you like to grown up and be a ranger, who feeds these semi-wild orangutans? Twice a day the rangers come to the feeding station but most of Mina’s food she must find herself in the rainforest. Mina came to the rehabilitation center in 1979 and though now living successfully in the rainforest, she likes to come back to the feeding platform for bananas. But what’s that? The ranger has milk, too. And Mina knows how to hold a glass and drink her milk. She looks so cute drinking out of a glass. How clever are these orangutans!
     As she is feeding we hear loud rustling all around us –above us, behind us and in the distance. We hear them before we see them. Looking up I see another large orangutan coming to the feeding station. Her arms and legs are so strong. She is quite large but so graceful moving through the trees. Mina leaves as the other orangutan comes for bananas and milk. This orangutan has a sweet face and is smaller than Mina. She has some bananas and some milk and then moves back up into the trees.
       Now as I look around I see that there are 12 orangutans stationed in the trees around the platform. They have respect for one another and will not barge in on a dominant female. But soon we have 4 orangutans around us looking at us while we take their photos absolutely stunned by their beauty and their beautiful eyes. Each one has a different expression. We share 97% of the same genes as these orangutans and primatologist Dr Carel van Schaik has said that orangutans are the world’s most intelligent animals after humans. Would you like to be a priamtologist and study primates? As I look at their bodies and their faces, I wonder what they are thinking. They seem to be thinking about us as much as we are thinking about them.
     Male orangutans are solitary by nature though the females are less solitary probably because of their young. They prefer not to live in groups though which is different from baboons. Their priorities in life: eat, rest, travel and occasionally socialize. They are among the mildest mannered primates - normally peaceable.
     I ask our guide if we will see a male and he tells me a sad story about one of the rehabilitated males. Abdul has been shot with pellet guns by a farmer. I am shocked and so sad to hear this news. He has been taken far away to a hospital where he will be cared for. I hope that he will make a speedy recovery but I wonder why the farmer shot him. Here I find another problem facing the survival of the orangutans.
     Besides the illegal pet trade, another problem challenging the survival of orangutans is the conflict between them and the oil palm plantations. Have you ever seen an oil palm plantation? Currently the rainforest is being sold both legally and illegally selling the logs for lumber. The lumber from the trees is exported providing income for people.
     But as the rainforest decreases, so does the amount of land that all of the wildlife lives in. Remember all of the different types of wildlife that live in the forest hunting for food? They can only survive if we protect their habitat. We all have to think of ways to protect the forests from illegal logging. 
       Because of the size of Leuser National Park and cost of patrols, it is very difficult to protect the rainforest from the illegal logging. More efforts need to be made with aerial searches and with elephant patrols to stop illegal logging if all of the wildlife living in Leuser National Park will survive. But legal logging in Leuser Ecosystem must be stopped as well.
     After logging the rainforest, the oil palm plantations are planted in their place. Oil palm is used in many different products all over the world from toothpaste to shampoo, from bread to chocolate and is now added to biofuel. We humans are buying thousands of products all over the world that contain oil palm. But we need to stop cutting down more forest to produce it. Now it is important to have sustainable oil palm plantations.
     So how do we save Abdul from getting shot by a farmer who is trying to make a living? What is the answer to this problem? Is there a point where too much of the forest is used for oil palm plantations and not enough is saved for orangutans? It is up to all of us to decide where the stopping point for farming is. It is up to everyone in Indonesia to decide how much of their priceless rainforest they are willing to save. Once the rainforest is cut down to so small a size, the orangutans and the other wildlife will no longer be able to survive. Their food sources will be too small and the beautiful orangutans will no longer live in the wild.
     We humans have choices to make. We must consider the needs of the farmers and the needs of the wildlife. Can they both exist? If Indonesia protects the Mt Leuser National Park from logging and oil palm plantations, they are also protecting the entire planet. Why is that? Because the rainforest protects all of us from global warming. But Indonesia is losing 2.8 million hectares of rainforest every year and experts predict their forests will be wiped out altogether within the next 15 years. We must pay attention now and do something about it. The orangutans will survive if we think about what we are doing and protect the rainforest. If we take care of Mother Nature, she will protect us with all of her trees.
     What can you do to help protect the rainforest and the orangutans? Start a conservation group at your school. Talk to your teachers at school and ask them for ideas for projects. Talk to your parents about the problems facing the orangutans. See if your family can plan a trip to the Bohorok Orangutan Centre in Sumatra. Your family can join a conservation group working to protect the orangutans. Go to the library and see if there is a book to read about orangutans. Maybe when you can grow up and go to college, you can study how to save the rainforest through conservation or ecotourism development. We all can find something to do to help orangutans survive. If it is even only one small thing to protect the Leuser Ecosystem or to help orangutans, it will still help.
     My trip to see the orangutans continued and I watched them drink milk and eat more bananas and then climb back up into the trees. I felt very lucky to have seen them all and want to help protect them. I will keep volunteering with the Sumatra Orangutan Society in Ubud, Bali.

For more information please visit the sos web-site www.orangutans-sos.org and support their work. Also find another article on:

www.baliforkids.com/palm_orangutan.htm