Dear friends,

Greeting from FNPF

First of all we would like to thank those who keep supporting FNPF, allowing us to continue our work even though we still could not work at the park this month. Thank you very much for Mr. Frank King who had donated a Compaq LTE Elite 4/75CXL to us.

During the month Herlin and I attended the second orangutan Workshop in Palangkaraya. On this occasion we would also to thank CBSG and the Gibbon Foundation who let us participate in this event, enabling us to have a better vision of orangutan rehabilitation programs and other activities connected with orangutan conservation.

In this month we also got a new orangutan baby that was handed to us by park management. The baby was given voluntarily by a villager from Tanjung Putri village to a park officer.

Here attached our June 2002 report in detail.

Sincerely yours,

Drh I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha
Director of FNPF.

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June 2002 report
Reported by Drh. I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha & Drh. Herlin Rangkuti

Orangutan Workshop

We are so pleased that we had an opportunity to attend the second Orangutan Workshop in Palangkaraya that was sponsored by the Gibbon Foundation and organized by CBSG. In this workshop we joined the rehabilitation and reintroducing group and veterinarian group.

We gained an important opportunity to inform other parties involved with orangutan conservation and related activities of our existence and to make sure they know that there is an Indonesian NGO working with orangutans and their habitat in Tanjung Puting National Park. We also could share our experiences and get more information about how other organizations are doing their work with the orangutan and its habitat, with local communities around the working site and how they cooperate with other parties.

For us the most important step that will ensure orangutan conservation and other conservation activities get more support from the Indonesian public is to allow more Indonesians to join the research and work in this kind of activity. Most of the Indonesians who were attending this meeting could not give much input because they do not have as much experience as the other attendees. We have strongly recommended to the educational group that in the future, whenever there is any research or other activities regarding orangutan conservation or conservation in general within Indonesia, that relevant local universities should be notified in advance.

We also recommended that this kind of research must provide a budget to sponsor Indonesian students to join the research at the same level as other participants ( not just as observers ) in order to allow us to have more and more Indonesians who understand about conservation. We believe that we would get more local support to implement the result of research if the information and findings are made by Indonesians, who can draw on their own understanding of Indonesia, its populace and needs. We also noted that a number of participants should come from government institutions which produce and also implement the regulations that form the basis of conservation activity in Indonesia. Our other suggestion for the educational group is to provide a list of funding organizations that could sponsor Indonesian students to learn about environmental issues especially regarding orangutans, to carry out research and other relevant activities.

Even though we could not follow some of the recommendations from the first and second workshop especially in conjunction with facilities that we do not have yet such as a laboratory,a special quarantine station and a suitable clinic, we have managed to ensure coverage by working together with the hospital lab and doctor to get any necessary service. So far we do not have any difficulties getting their assistance whenever we have any cases that we cannot solve using our own facilities. At the moment we really need to have these facilities especially if we have more orangutans to handle. Hopefully however rehabilitant cases will not increase; any increase means more female orangutans are being killed and it is means that people still do not care enough about orangutans.

Orangutan Rehabilitation Program

As the villagers are still occupying Tanjung Harapan and Pondok Tanggui, we still could not do our work as we used to in the park. Adung and Lady are staying at Ainun's ( the baby sitter ) house. They both are being trained to climb and are also undertaking other training programs at the small forest near Ainun's house. Both of them looked great except Adung has gained a bit more weight.

On June 16th we received one male orangutan baby from the park officer. The baby is about 6 months, has thick hair with 8 kg weight and we named him Butet. He came in a poor condition, lethargic and with anorexia. From our observation we did not find any infectious problems ( bacteria, fungus and parasite ) and we believe the reason why he came in that condition was just because of stress. We have given him vitamins and will minimise the contact with all humans except the person responsible for taking care of him. Since he came he did not defecate until June 22nd. We added food that has a lot of fibre to his diet besides the milk, baby food and fruits that we gave him in order to make him defecate.

Drh. Herman from the agriculture department in Pangkalan Bun helped us to take care of Butet when we were both in Palangkaraya for the workshop. After Drh. Herman gave him a vitamin injection and massage Butet defecated for the first time on June 22nd in the morning. Thank you very much to Drh. Herman and Drh. Agus from Quarantine station who have committed to help us with any medical problems whenever our vet is away. Since June 23rd Butet has defecated normally, he has more appetite and is stronger. We will continue to give him multivitamins to make sure he could pass the adaptation period with less stress and in greater health.

Reforestation Project

Even though we could not continue our project at the park, we still keep our nursery unit at Tanjung Harapan village. Pak Dullah, one of the villagers, is helping us to maintain the seedlings that we have at Tanjung Harapan. Actually the seedlings were ready to be replanted six months ago but as the villagers have occupied Tanjung Harapan we could not do it. We do not want to replant the seedlings at other areas as we do not want to make a significant change to the bio-diversity of the park. All of the seedlings that we have at Tanjung Harapan come from the area near where we have planned to carry out our reforestation project.

The Rehabilitation Post

The park director Mr. Lusman Pasaribu is working to sort out the problem by approaching all government institutions. We hope that they will be able to co-operate well to solve the problem.

Once again thank you very much for all of your support.

Sincerely yours,

Bayu and Herlin