Baby orangutan rescued from a sack in Sumatra

17 orangutans rescued in the last year

April 2013. A young orangutan that was being kept in a sack has been rescued by the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC), a conservation group working in Sumatra. The orangutan, a male thought to be around two years old, was being kept illegally by an oil palm plantation worker.

The ‘owner' told the rescue team that he found the orangutan in farmlands next to the Gunung Leuser National Park a month ago. The young orangutan had been attacked by a dog, and he had captured the wounded animal and kept him in his kitchen. Sumatran orangutans are critically endangered and are a protected species under Indonesian law, so it is completely illegal to kill, capture, or harm an orangutan.

The OIC's veterinarian, Dr. Ricko Jaya, found eight bite wounds on the orangutan. He said "It is hard to believe that a dog constantly attacked the orangutan baby without any protection from his mother. I think that the mother must have been attacked by plantation workers, presumably using air rifle guns, a quite common practice to scare away animals by oil palm farmers in Sumatra. The orangutan baby must have become separated from his mother and fallen on the ground, at which point he would have been bitten by the dog."

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/orangutan-rescue.html