For more than a year, the international animal protection organisation FOUR PAWS, together with its local partner Jejak Pulang, and the Indonesian government, has been setting up a new rehabilitation project for orangutans in Borneo.

Now the time has finally come: today, the new FOUR PAWS ORANGUTAN FOREST SCHOOL in East Kalimantan opened, and the first school year can begin. Eight orangutan orphans between the ages of eleven months and nine years will be the first students to attend the 100-hectare FOREST SCHOOL run by FOUR PAWS experienced primatologist, Dr Signe Preuschoft. Dr Preuschoft works with an Indonesian team of 15 animal caretakers, a biologist and two veterinarians who will intensively care for the orangutans and prepare them for release back into the rainforest.

Up to now, FOUR PAWS has taken in the eight orangutan orphans who all had to watch as their mothers were cruelly killed – victims of the palm oil, tropical timber and coal industries.

First day at the FOREST SCHOOL

Setting up the project in the middle of Borneo’s rainforest is a major logistical challenge, and the infrastructure of the FOREST SCHOOL is still in the making. However, the orangutan orphans need to spend as much time in their natural environment as possible. As a result, from now on a first group of five orangutans travel daily from their current sleeping quarters to the FOREST SCHOOL in the 'school bus'. There, they learn with their human surrogate mothers the skills that their birth mothers would normally teach them. The curriculum includes climbing, foraging, and building a sleeping nest. Next month, they will be able to move into their new sleeping quarters, just across the river bordering the Forest School.

The eight forest students

A special aspect of this project is that every animal is supported by Dr Preuschoft and her team depending on its individual development level and pace. Therefore, not all orangutans are in the same 'class'. Baby Gonda, aged about eight months at his arrival, had to build muscle to cling and hold fast on his own and to learn how orangutans move around in the forest.

“In the meantime, Gonda has already learned to climb in trees,” says Dr Preuschoft. “By now, he can hang upside down and hold onto a branch with only his legs. His friend Tegar, who is four months older, is already more agile. He bends small branches together, grabs the next branch, shifts his centre of gravity and then slides over like real orangutans do. Gonda still has a lot of practice to do until he can manage that.”

Three-and-a-half-year-old Cantik and five-year-old Eska, meanwhile, are already practising chasing and wrestling in the treetops – an advanced skill, since an orangutan must also consider how the weight of his or her partner affects the swishing of the branches.

The two latest arrivals, eleven-month-old Gerhana and eighteen-month-old Kartini, are still cared for by their human surrogate mothers and at the same time they socialise with the other babies in the kindergarten. Seven-year-old Amalia and nine-year-old Robin are still living in enclosures. Dr Preuschoft and her team will closely monitor their behaviour and abilities over the next few months to decide if and when they can attend the FOREST SCHOOL.

Forest School graduation – what comes next?

Rehabiliation in the FOREST SCHOOL curriculum matches natural child development. As babies, the orangutans first enjoy the loving care of their human surrogate mothers in the baby house and visit the kindergarten. From the age of two, the toddlers attend the Forest School. As their competence increases, the orangutans become more adventurous and independent. When they reach puberty, it is time for them to advance to the so-called Forest Academy. The FOUR PAWS team decides in each individual case when an orangutan can be released into the wild on his or her own.

FOUR PAWS and the orangutan project in Borneo

FOUR PAWS has been working to rehabilitate traumatised orangutan orphans in Borneo for over a decade. Following the re-organisation of local activities, the new FOUR PAWS-funded FOREST SCHOOL is a cooperation project between FOUR PAWS, its local partner Jejak Pulang, and the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In addition to the completion of infrastructure in the forest, a quarantine station and a tree house for very young orangutan orphans are planned.

Orangutans in Borneo

Rainforest has been destroyed on a massive scale in Borneo over the last four decades. Thousands of orangutans have become victims of the palm oil, tropical timber and coal industries. Every year, between two and three thousand orangutans are killed because they are considered harvest thieves on the oil palm plantations, but also for their meat. Helpless orphans whose mothers were deliberately killed end up as pets. The Bornean orangutan is a critically endangered species.

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