The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation will release at least six orangutans into the wild on April 22, a foundation official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
That is just a small percentage of the 600 orangutans the group says are ready for release, with budget constraints slowing the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll release six orangutans initially because we can\u2019t release all of them at once. We will follow their every move for two years because it\u2019s not easy to adapt to the wild after being in captivity for so long,\u201d said Bungaran Saragih, the founder and chairman of the foundation.<\/p>\n
The foundation has two rehabilitation centers, one in Nyaru Menteng, Central Kalimantan, and the other in Samboja Lestari, East Kalimantan. They house 850 orangutans rescued from captivity, and Bungaran said at least 600 were ready to be released into the wild in East Kalimantan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve gone to school, they\u2019ve gained their health back, we just need to send them back to the forest. But the money is not ready yet because we need a helicopter,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need at least Rp 60 million [$6,000] per hour to move them, and the trip takes about 3.5 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the more pressing problem, he said, is saving the forest so the orangutan have somewhere to go.
\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are running out of forest,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why my suggestion to the Forestry Ministry is that you can\u2019t just have a \u2018one man, one tree\u2019 slogan. It won\u2019t be enough. If one trillion trees are planted on the road, it\u2019s not going to be a forest. We need forests, not trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
To create an area where orangutans can be released, the BOSF founded Restorasi Habitat Orangutan Indonesia. The organization has already been granted 86,450 hectares of former forest concession land in East Kalimantan, and is now trying to secure a permit to manage 120,000 hectares in Central Kalimantan.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of\u00a0 The Jakarta Globe\/Fidelis E. Satriastanti\/<\/strong> January 11, 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation will release at least six orangutans into the wild on April 22, a foundation official said on Tuesday. That is just a small percentage of the 600 orangutans the group says are ready for release, with budget constraints slowing the process. \u201cWe\u2019ll release six orangutans initially because we can\u2019t release […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-center"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n