The Challenges

Orangutans in rehabilitation centers are individuals who have spent most of their lives with humans, as pets or as prisoners, for various motives. They all ended up at the centers because they had been rescued or because their owners willingly turned them in. Some were also salvaged at a very young age, because their mothers had been slaughtered. Living in cages and being fed by humans, they had lost almost all of their natural instincts to survive in the wild.

However, after going through several comprehensive stages of rehabilitation and health checks at the centers, some orangutans are now ready to be reintroduced into the wild. But releasing them is not as easy as some people may think. It takes more than just opening the cages and let them run into a forest. They need a secure and sustainable habitat, in line with the guidelines from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), that meets the criteria for quality, carrying capacity, and security.

They cannot be released in forests where orangutans roam free all their lives. Rehabilitated orangutans may never be able to live side by side with wild orangutans that have not had any contact with humans and therefore possess natural instincts instead of learned ones, which rules out the possibility of releasing them in national parks and protected forests.

Moreover, orangutans only live in lowland forests, while most healthy forests in Indonesia now only exist in high altitudes. They also cannot transmigrate, which means East Kalimantan orangutans cannot be released in Central Kalimantan or other forests outside East Kalimantan. This rule applies with orangutans in other areas in Indonesia as well.

Even after they are released, challenges still exist. The newly released orangutans must be monitored closely for a period of time to ensure a successful reintroduction program. In short, orangutan reintroduction is a laborious and high-cost program.

The Answer

Consequently, all of these requirements narrow down options to find suitable release sites. And of course this is a serious concern, especially because reintroduction activities have become a government commitment, described as objective and target in the Strategy and Action Plan for Orangutan Conservation in Indonesia, 2007-2017. In this document, it is stated that rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans into their natural habitats should be accomplished by 2015.

Following the official launch of the Action Plan, the government passed a new regulation. Since then, the Regulation of the Minister of Forestry Number P/61/Menhut-II/2008 has granted the long-awaited opportunities for private sectors to utilise and manage natural forests through ecosystem restoration forest concession (IUPHHK-RE) scheme.

This is where we came in. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) soon after established RHOI on April 21, 2009 to become the first company of its kind that provides answers to the above difficulties. And on September 15, 2009, RHOI finally obtained the Permission Principle (SP-1) from the Minister of Forestry Number S.739/Menhut-VI/2009, to manage 86,450 hectares of suitable rainforest in East Kalimantan, providing a sustainable and legally secured orangutan habitat for at least 60 years, with the option to extend it for another 35 years.

The Commitment

In both district, RHOI is undertaking sustainable forest management in general, such as ecosystem restoration, rehabilitation, environmental management, securing forest areas, local community empowerment and involvement through partnerships, forest concession education and training, research and development, trading (goods and services of non-timber forest products, including ecotourism) for domestic and international markets.

It is our commitment not only to provide a safe and sustainable haven for Asia’s only great apes and the icon of Indonesia, but also to support the effort to combat serious threats of climate change caused by global warming.