Jungle Rescue: Saving the Orangutans (page 4 of 4)

Images from this article

Jay Ullal from Thinkers of the Jungle, published by H. F. Ullmann

"If you look into the eyes of an orangutan," says Smits, "you are looking into the soul of a person."

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Jay Ullal from Thinkers of the Jungle, published by H. F. Ullmann

Orange crush: Smits with his charges at one of his rehab centers.

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Jay Ullal from Thinkers of the Jungle, published by H. F. Ullmann

Survival strategy: As part of their retraining for the wild, orangutans are taught to eat high above the ground to avoid predators.

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BOS bought 5,000 acres and hired local workers to clear away the grass and plant a million trees. Samboja Lestari—"Samboja Forever," in the local dialect—was designed as concentric circles. In the middle is a nearly mature forest, home to a growing number of rescued orangutans. On the periphery are plots where 650 human families can grow fruit and sugar palms, the sap of which will be sold for use in sweeteners and bio-fuels. (Unlike oil palms, sugar palms thrive alongside native plants.) Samboja Lestari is also the site of a lodge for ecotourists and a satellite transponder station serving the European Space Agency, both of which help pay the project's expenses.

Residents of the area earn wages doing reforestation work, send their children to a BOS-run school, and get free building materials if they choose to live on their plots. In return, they're responsible for policing themselves: If anyone is caught harming an orangutan or a tree, his neighbors must decide the penalty. So far, there have been no transgressions.

Outside the perimeter, "we're working very hard," Smits says, "but we're not solving the problem."

When he grows weary, it helps to hike into the forest where he released Uce in 1992. She lives there with her youngest male offspring, Matahari, whose father is Dodoy, Smits's second rescuee. (An older male, Bintang, has grown up and left the nest.) When Smits calls Uce's name, she clambers down from the treetops. "She hands me her baby and hugs me," he says.

Smits recently shot a video of mother and child playing on the forest floor. Though orangutans can't speak, they communicate eloquently by other means. In the film, Uce stops for a moment and looks up at her human friend. Her smile is broad and warm, and that tells Smits everything he needs to know.

Want to help the orangutans? Find out how here.

LEARN MORE

-Borneo has 45,000 orangutans, down from 60,000 in 1996. Sumatra has 5,000, half the '96 number.

-Borneo's 287,000 square miles were once almost entirely rain forest; now half are.

-For every orangutan captured for the pet trade, five die in the process.

-The population shrinks by 6,000 per year, and the animals could be extinct by 2020. •

From Reader's Digest - November 2008

• • Animal Stories

• Save the Orangutans
• Want to help the endangered animal survive? Here's how.
• 
• Wild Animal Sanctuary
• Some 25,000 wild animals live in captivity outside U.S. zoos, many horribly abused.
• 
• Semper Fido
• One scruffy puppy in Baghdad. One hardened Marine who couldn't leave him behind.
•