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VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES REPORT - December, 2001
Tanjung Puting National Park
Dear Friends,
We wish everybody have a Happy new year and a better hope in this year and we are very thankful to those who keep supporting FNPF in any way. In this New Year we also have a new park's director. Mr. Lusman Pasaribu who has started his new position since January 08 2002. In this occasion we would also like to thank the previous park's director Mr. Suherti Reddy who had given us an opportunity to continue our work at Tanjung Puting National Park and his good co-operation during his assignment.
The illegal logging is decreasing now but it is change become another form of wildlife destruction by the people around the park to make a living. It is seem like our previous government policy so much depended on the forest to get their main income. It was also make the local people never ever thought about another way to make a living instead of take anything they can take from the forest. We think it is very urgent to create some works for the local people that make the people in this area have another option to survive. We believe FNPF will not be capable to cover the whole problem by our self. Whatever we can do right now is just to make a pilot project that can be used as an example for the bigger project whenever the funds are available. We hope we will get more support either from the government or NGOs to solve some of the problem.
Here attached our activities report for December 2001 - January 2002. Once again thank you for all of your support we hope we can do more this year.
Sincerely yours
Drh. I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha
Director of FNPF
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ACTIVITY REPORT
September - November 2001
By Drh. Herlin Rangkuti
FNPF Veterinarian
Orangutan Rehabiloitaion
PONDOK TANGGUI
In this month it was so few ex captive orangutan came to the feeding station. Until the second week of December 2001 there were only three orangutans that still came to the feeding station for several time. They were Copral, Corin and Doyok. After the second week there were not any orangutan came to the feeding area which we believe become a good sign of their adaptation ability. In this month there were so many fruit available at this station. The orangutan almost ate any kind of fruit that available at this station such as Krantungan ( some kind of durian ) , Idur, Hairy Lechee, Nyantuk, Lurangan, Bekunyiy, Belalai, Tembunsu, Pialai, Gandis, Sindur, Pepagar, Pentamuk, Akar Bingkai and Asam Kalimantan ( all in local name ). There are quite a lot fruit available around the post we believe it still available until the end of January 2002. We believe the absence of the ex captive orangutan at the feeding area are connected with the food availability in the forest.
For us, this indicate that the ex captive orangutan prefer to consume their natural food than the food that we are providing at the feeding platform. This is something that we really expect from this program to bring them back to their natural life.
To get a better success in the future now we are recording any none seasonal fruiting tree that could provide fruit year around for the orangutan. We will concentrate our reforestation nursery unit to prepare more seedling for these kind of tree.
The observation of the wild and ex captive orangutan interaction was a bit difficult to be done in this month because there were no orangutan could be followed as they did not come to the feeding area. Beside that our staff spent more of their time to prepare the reforestation project to make sure we can replant the seedling in January 2002 or before the end of rainy season.
Tanjung Harapan
In the middle of December Yanari ( 25 years old male ) 4 times came close to the rehabilitation post. We heard a long call from the forest direction for a bout a week since we saw him. On the second day of his appearance we saw Nyoman ( 4 years & 5 months male ) and Bonzen ( 4 years & 10 months male ) came along with him from the Eastern direction from the ranger post.
Firstly we heard Bonzen made a noise before than we saw Yanari with his long shiny hair. That time Nyoman and Bonzen stayed about 10 meters from him keep watching Yanari and holding each other. Eventually both Nyoman and Bonzen move from one tree to the other closer and closer to Yanari. They stopped when they were about 2 meters from Yanari. Yanari did not show any aggression to these young orangutans. On the fourth day we saw Yanari was being followed by wild female orangutan with her baby. We saw this orangutan had almost a same size with Davida and her baby also have almost the same size with Davida's baby named David. When we tried come closer she covered her face with leafs. Nyoman and Bonzen seem like have a homosexuality problem. These babies were came from a different place and time. They are became closer and closer every day since they are being rehabilitated at Tanjung Harapan. We saw them quite often doing an oral sex, kissing each other, come in and out from the cage always together.
They are always sleep together and keep holding each other all the time. We will learn about this case more for further information.
Davida ( 29 years ) and her son David ( 5 years ) came to the feeding area for two times. David behave differently this time. Instead of moving around the feeding area or at the ranger post area he just picked up some bananas at the feeding platform then went straight away to the forest. Davida looked a bit skinnier than last month especially on her belie. We saw her mated with Yanari three months ago on the tree 300 about meters from the ranger post. Since this month we put Adung ( 2 years & 2 months male ) and Lady ( 3 years & 10 months female ) together in the same cage at night where Nyoman and Bonzen sometime come for overnight. We hope we can build up a good relation among them and also to let Lady and Adung learn something from them. So far Nyoman and Bonzen are the fastest orangutan who can adapt them self with their natural life. From our observation we found that Adung could get along with both Nyoman and Bonzen but Lady seem like more solitaire. We believe this is because a different treatment when they were being kept as a pet. Lady was treated like human baby by her keeper before. She lived in a house, had a same food with her keeper, had bath daily and clothing too. Until this time Lady really enjoy to play with water and quite often steal food from our kitchen. Sometime she went to the shelter have a seat just like human. It is seem like she has quite strong memory about her past life.
During this fruit season we are trying to feed all of the babies with forest fruit in order to introduce them with the food that they may find in the wild. At the beginning they could not enjoy it and some time they refuse it. To convinced them that the fruit is something they can eat we peel the fruit and eat it in front of them. They started to try after they saw us ate the fruit and gradually they like it.
Congo ( 25 years old ) and her son Chimenk ( 1 year old ) never come to the feeding area this month. Barry the Gibbon ( male 1 year & 9 months ) and Boim ( female 7 months ) started to have a close relation. They are now playing, drinking and eating together. Sometime Barry hug Boim. Boim had used to sleep on the tree but Barry still sleep at the boat house. Barry was brought into the park by our ex-volunteer Ms. Phyllis Blum and Boim was found at a house in Pangkalan Bun by our staff.
In general we do not see any health problem in both Tanjung Harapan and Pondok Tanggui Post.
Re-forestation
All of the seedling that we prepared at Pondok Tanggui are ready to be replanted. It have been exposed by 100% sun light and rain. There were only 3,6 percents of our seedlings died during the acclimation period. We have made holes at 1 hectare of land from 2,5 hectares that we are projecting. We have replaced 564 seedling at the park reforestation project site which are Nyantuh and Sundi tree. Right now we have been starting the second step of our reforestation project by prepare our own seedling instead of collect the seedling from the forest. For initial project we put about 389 Nyantuh seed on the seed pad.
General situation of the park.
We have some better condition at the park during December period. There were more visitor came to the park and they came nearly everyday. The other good news is the illegal logging activities are decreasing due to less buyer at the town. The logger right now difficult to sell their log as the timber companies afraid to buy illegal log. It is seem the law enforcement for illegal logging is getting better. There were about 20 ships have been confiscated at Kumai bay because they brought illegal logs.
This situation made a big impact in the economic situation at Pangkalan Bun, Kumai and some other area where we have some people use to live a logger. They compensate their logging work to hunting, collecting Gembor tree bark the basic material of mosquito coil and even collecting fruit from the forest. Unfortunately some of the villager who collected fruit cut the tree to get the fruit which is very unnecessary.
On January 03 2002 there were some people made a demonstration action to the local parliament to protest the decreasing of the timber business because of a stronger law enforcement that have been made by our government. They said since the government stop the illegal logging business they could not make a living.
From this action we really hope that the government ( local / central ) will more aware to educate and facilitate the citizen not to rely on logging or other activities to make a living that are using forest as the only sources. We believe we can develop another option for the people to make a living such as agriculture, aqua culture, livestock, plantation and other thing according to the local potential. We hope we can get more and more support either from the government or NGOs who care about this complicated situation.
Thank you for your support and we hope we can do more in this year.
Sincerely yours,
Drh. Herlin Rangkuti
FNPF's Veterinarian
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VETERINARIAN STUDENT REPORT I did my second week volunteer activity at two stations Tanjung Harapan and
Pondok Tanggui. We have been doing Physical examination to the orangutan when they come to the
station since a month a go. During this period we have done some examination of From the examination and observation we found that they are all in good
condition. From fecal examination to Adung, Lady, Nyoman and Bonzen we did not
find any sign of intestinal worm infection. From our observation to the orangutan at two station, we can tell that the
male ex-captive orangutan can be rehabilitated easier than the female. The semi
wild adult female orangutan can be very helpful to rehabilitate the juvenile by
teach them how to survive in the forest. It is shown by how Davida and Congo
teach Nyoman and Bonzen at Tanjung Harapan and Rosmery did the same way to
Thosido, Pangkut, and Darmono at Pondok Tanggui. That is all I can report for this month and thank you very much for your
attention. Sincerely Yours, Rismayani Sari Dewi, S. KH.
(FNPF's Volunteer)
Reported by Rismayani Sari Dewi, S.KH
Veterinary Student
Decemeber 2001
Veterinarian Student.