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VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES REPORT - August, 2001
Tanjung Puting National Park
Dear Friends,
Greeting from FNPF.
First of all thanks to those who keep supporting us that allow us keep improving our work at Tanjung Puting National Park. In this occasion we are very please to inform you that we have signed our new MoU with Tanjung Puting National Park's management. The new MoU will valid from January 01st 2002 - January 01st 2005.
Unfortunately OFI is still taking over the third camp Camp Leaky and they are now also come to the first camp Tanjung Harapan. I have complained to the park director because it bother our program. Since they made their feeding platform close to the camp there are more ex-captive orangutan that have survive without take any food from the camp. We believe there are also some wild orangutan come to get food from their platform.
What we have been doing at Tanjung Harapan before the OFI staff came here we only use this camp to take care the orangutan that need an intensive care. They are the babies, the new comer, and the sick one. After we think the young orangutan that have been rehabilitated here we move them to the second camp Pondok Tanggui.
Here with the report from our veterinarian for August - September 15 2001 complete with the new MoU on English and Indonesian version.
Once again thank you for your kind attention and support.
Sincerely yours,
Drh I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha Director of FNPF
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Veterinarian Report
By. Drh. Herlin Rangkuty
August - Sept. 15th 2001
VETERINARIAN REPORT August - September 15th 2001 By Drh. Herlin Rangkuty
On this report we would like to inform you about our current activities at Tanjung Puting National Park. In our previous report we have mentioned regarding the observation of the interaction between the ex-captive and the wild orangutan. We have made our first observation on some wild and ex-captive orangutans.
Here with our report in detail.
In general Generally, the orangutan health condition at two stations are very good and there is no serious problem happened to them. Even we do not find any serious problem we still add vitamins on their food to ensure they do not have a nutritional problem which we believe can develop become another problem.
Tanjung Harapan
In the last few days we have quite a lot of rainfall and it affect the orangutan activities especially the babies. We put the two babies Adung and Lady in their cage whenever we have rain in regard to avoid the stress that mayoccur because of it.
We have a special observation and treatment to Adung, Lady, Nyoman and Bonzen in this station as they are still under our intensive care especially Adung and Lady.
Adung and Lady baby are being taking care by our baby sitter Ainun. Even we almost never make any contact with Nyoman and Bonzen who have shown us a lot of progress we have a keeper / ranger who is giving a special attention and make a record for any progress that both Nyoman and Bonzen have and they also in charge to take care of them whenever they have a problem after veterinarian examination been made.
Adung and lady have made some progress on their ability to climb and play with the other orangutan. Adung is better than Lady on his ability to climb. Adung can stay longer and spend much more time than Lady. He plays with Nyoman and Bonzen very often when both of them come to the feeding area. Adung loves to play with Nyoman rather than Bonzen. Nyoman can spend his time with Adung more than the time he can pend with Lady because Lady is still afraid of Nyoman. Sometime Lady join them but she mostly to stay by her self.
Nyoman and Bonzen only come to the station for some time. When they stay at the station they usually only spend one night then go to the forest in the other morning. We already told two of our keeper / rangers to observe and make any necessary record of their activities around the station and sometime follow them to the forest. From their observation, we found out that both Nyoman and Bonzen still stay close to the station. So far they only move as far as 1 km from the station. We think they still afraid to stay further and longer then what they are doing now because they do not have a good time when they were away from the station for 23 days month ago.
Pondok Tanggui
The ranger at this station start to observe the interaction between wild and ex-captive orangutan. The aim of this observation is to understand the influence of the interaction between wild and ex-captive orangutan at this station both to the wild and the ex-captive.
We have been doing special observation on orangutans named Kopral, Corin and Doyok because they can not adapt like the other ex-captive orangutan that have shown us a good adaptation ability. By this special observation we hope we can find out what kind of treatment we need to apply to these orangutans. They are always stay around the station if there are visitors come to this station. We are worry that they will come to the station when we have more visitors coming. At the moment, all of the ex-captive orangutans are never come to the station and come close to the visitor.
Orangutan named Nanang, Monty, Rossy, Jabrut, Ijuh and Jacky are never come to the station for about a month. Some of the orangutans still come to the feeding area. For us this is good sign for our success because it is mean they can survive by them self. Only Kopral, Corin and Doyok can not survive at the forest as long as like the other.
We have been doing the interaction observation since month a go. The first observation was done to the wild male orangutan that came to the station for the first time on August 1. We record that he has been five time come close to the ex-captive orangutan. He has some mark on his body that we can identified. His face looks like Doyok's face and he has wound on his right"pendulous cheek pad". From the five times of observation we can see that this male orangutan can recognise some female ex-captive orangutan. Some of the juveniles from the ex-captive orangutans even follow him for sometime to the forest.
On August 27, two rangers, Danson and Ledan went to the forest to follow a wild female orangutan with her baby around 2,5 years old. This wild female orangutan also followed by ex-captive orangutan named Doyok, Kopral, Corin, Linda and Siswa. They were found at the Eastern side of the tower and all of them was searching for fruits at the same tree. They were stay together from 9 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the evening.
Re-Forestation
We have finished our nursery unit at Tanjung Harapan village. It is a simple wooden building 8 X 4 m square, the roof was made out of Nipah palm leaf. The roof is designed to allow us to control the sunlight intensity. The first period we protect the seedling from 75% sunlight and then we will reduce it according to the seedling condition.
Our rangers have collected approximately 1100 seedlings that from the area surround the reforestation site and keep it at the nursery unit. We use a plastic Polybag and group them according to their species. Here with some species that are being kept at our nursery unit.
As the initial project will be a training project for our staff we are doing it along with the park ranger who have experienced for this job. One of our staff Ledan ever worked for Ms. Carry Yeager's at Natai Lengkuas for quite long for reforestation and also seed distribution by fruit bat research. He join us after Ms. Yeager could not continue her work at Natai Lengkuas because the illegal logger destroyed her research site.
The aim of this project is to make sure all of our staff have a proper education and training to do the future project and could be a trainer for the villager. We hope by giving a simple example we can encourage the villagers, visitors, students and other parties to support our reforestation in the future.
With our limited budget right now we can only ask 2 FNPF's staff ( ranger / keeper ) and 2 Park's rangers to work with this project in day by day basis.
Since August 28th 2001 at Pondok Tanggui he have made some holes approximately 1 by 1 m in wide and 1 m deep depend on the soil condition. Until today we have worked on an area about 10.000 m2 area. We are projecting to plant about 1000 seedling on this area the first project. Most of the seedling that we will plant are the one that can produce fruits and leafs that orangutan can eat it.
Fish Farming
As the rainy season was begun, the fish that we are keeping grow much faster then during dry season. We hope the first group will reproduce soon. We will not bring in any fray to the village because the fish that we already have now is enough to be spread to the other villager that willing to join the fish farming. We will select some fish that we will use for breeding so we do not need to buy fray anymore. This will safe a lot of our expenses for this project because the most expensive component for this project is the fray.
That is all our report for this time. All of the rangers and FNPF's staff at Tanjung Puting send their best wishes and hoping that there >will be more support for them to continue their activities.
Thank you for your attention and kind support.
Sincerely Yours,
Drh. Herlin Rangkuty FNPF's Veterinarian
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