A tangible sense of excitement sets in at the Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine (OCCQ) in the days leading up to orangutans being permanently released back into the wild. OCCQ staff start cleaning and preparing transport cages, veterinarians do the final medical check-ups on the orangutans slated to be released, and caregivers spend some last tender moments with the orangutans they have watched grow up over the years. Surely the orangutans can sense the buzz [...]

  release   OCCQ, release, by Emily Patton.

On December 11, 2012 about one hundred people gathered at an isolated Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) forest camp at the edge of Tanjung Puting National Park in the province of Kalimantan Tengah (Central Indonesian Borneo) to release five wild born ex-captive adolescent male orangutans into the wild. The release occurred under the auspices of the “Friends of Orangutans” program initiated by OFI and P.T. Smart, an Indonesian company concerned with conservation. Crowd Excitement Grows in [...]

  Field Update   orangutans, release, by Dr. Birutė Mary Galdikas.

Not every orangutan release goes as planned. In April 2010 Congo, an eleven year old male, was released at a forest camp located in a secure patch of forest stewarded by OFI and used as a release site for rehabilitated orangutans. Unfortunately, in August he had to return to the Care Center in the village of Pasir Panjang. Congo had sustained injuries across his entire body, including a large wound on his right foreleg and [...]

  Orangutan, release   Care Center, Congo, release, by Tess Joyce.