Dear friends,

Greeting from FNPF

First of all we would like to thank those who keep supporting us and allowing us to continue our work.

On this occasion we would also like to inform you that our vet Drh. Herlin Rangkuty has resigned from FNPF and has returned to his home town in Medan, North Sumatra. For any required veterinary services, we have very good support from three veterinarians. Drh. Agus who is working for the quarantine station and has worked with orangutans quite a lot before he moved to Pangkalan Bun, and Drh Herman and Drh Lilis who both work for the agriculture department.

There is also a group of students called SAFIER from the Catholic University of Leuven,Belgium now helping us to carry out research with the following objectives :

General objectives

Conducting a full resource valuation of Tanjung Puting National Park. This is an important tool for the preservation of Tanjung Puting and to encourage the National Government to increase its efforts against illegal logging and gold mining.

Specific objectives

1. Assessing the biodiversity of the park and the Sekonyer river. Forest structure will be measured and naturally occurring non-timber products will be inventoried.
2. Measuring the effect of illegal logging and gold mining on forest and river biodiversity.
3. Contingent Valuation of use and non-use values of Tanjung Puting for local inhabitants and other stakeholders.
4. Investigating the possibilities and restrictions for ecotourism and aquaculture as viable alternatives to illegal logging.

They are initially working at Tanjung Harapan village. We hope that together we will arrive at a good and workable solution in the near future.

Please find below the report from FNPF staff for July 2002.
Once again thank you for your support !

Sincerely yours,

Drh I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha
Director of FNPF.

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Orangutan rehab

We still cannot work at the rehab centers in the park. All of the posts are still occupied by some villagers who are related to the leader named Yusup. However other villagers who had previously joined Yusup do not want to remain with him anymore. The latest development we have been informed of is that Yusup and his group have reduced their compensation claim from five hundred and ten Million rupiah from more than a Billion rupiah previously.

The orangutan at Pondok Tanggui are still being fed by these people but it is unclear who is the one who provides the budget for it. We are unfortunately unable to undertake this task as both the villagers and the park management refuse to allow us to do so.

We are only looking after three babies right now, namely Adung, Lady and Butet. We basically do our routine observation and are training them to climb in an area near our baby sitter's house .

Butet ( male ) 9 months had respiratory problems on July 07. Drh Herman and Drh Lilis gave him medical treatment and his respiration returned back to normal on July 09.

Adung ( male ) two years and 9 months is in good condition. He is now about 20 kg but is not too fat and is very active. Lady ( female ) 4 years and 5 months got sick on July 17 and looked lethargic. We have given her multi-vitamins and she recovered on the 7th day and is now back playing with Adung.

We got information from Mr. Iyan who joined the occupation at Pondok Tanggui that Nyoman and Bonzen had been injured. He thought that they had been injured by an air gun. They appear to have been medicated by OFI staff.

Reforestation

We continue our reforestation work at Tanjung Harapan by maintaining the nursery unit. We are also looking to set up another nursery unit at this village in order to have more space to do this work.

Miscellaneous

When we went to Tanjung Harapan village on July 30 we saw a boat pulling out about 57 logs, 8 km from the Sekonyer estuary.

That's all that we can inform you of this month. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely yours,

Mohamad Kasri
FNPF staff