The chances of at least 10 orangutans stranded in Thailand of going home to their native Indonesia are looking increasingly slim because of financial constraints.

The orangutans, which were brought to Thailand through illegal trade, are now being held at the Thai government’s Khao Phra rehabilitation center, about 100 kilometers outside Bangkok.

“We are aware of [the orangutans’] status and we have written to the Thai government offering to share the costs of a repatriation shipment, but they have not responded to our requests,” said Harry Santosa, director of biodiversity conservation at the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry.

Harry said there were no regulations, even in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, on how to return illegally traded species to their countries of origin.

“It seems that if the Thai government agreed to pay [to return the orangutans], it might look as if they had taken part in the stealing of the animals,” he said. “But, if all of the expenses were dumped on us, it would be too expensive to bear.”
(more…)

Conservationists, wildlife experts and government officials are set to meet today at an international conference in Bali to save the orangutan from extinction.

The International Workshop on Orangutan Conservation, which will run through July 15-16 at the beachside resort town of Sanur, is aimed at stabilizing the habitat and populations of both the Sumatran and Bornean subspecies by 2017, as well as completing a three-year-old rehabilitation program to release previously captive orangutans back into the wild by 2015.

Dr. Raffaella Commitante of the Orangutan Conservancy (OC) will make a case for effective partnerships at the conference with a paper entitled, “Methodology for Conservation: The Collaboration and Implementation to Succeed.” Dr. Commitante’s paper, which she wrote in collaboration with OC president Norm Rosen, makes clear that the highly individualized work currently underway cannot continue.

“Without a commitment for implementation, all the concepts, all the money, and all the people involved will not achieve the common goal, which in this instance is, to prevent orangutan extinction,” the paper states.

Meanwhile, the chief of the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) foundation, Bungaran Saragih, said that very little progress had been made toward either stabilizing wild populations or releasing rehabilitated orangutans back into the wild.
(more…)

Orangutans communicate intelligently using gestures, researchers have found.

British scientists who spent nine months observing the great apes in three European zoos identified 40 frequently used body language signals. These were employed repeatedly to send messages such as “I want to play”, “give it to me”, “go away”, “follow me”, or “stop doing that”.

“Play” gestures involved a range of clowning antics, including back rolls, placing objects on the head, and blowing raspberries.

“Nudge and shoo” movements meant an ape wanted to be left alone, while a hand to mouth “begging” gesture requested food.

Other gestures included hitting the ground, hair pulling, biting the air and grabbing.

This was the first study of great ape body language to focus on the intentional meanings of specific gestures. Two scientists from the University of St. Andrews observed 28 orangutans at Twycross Zoo in the UK, Apenheul Primate Park in the Netherlands, and the Durrell Trust in Jersey. Their study is reported in the journal Animal Cognition.

(Source: The Independent)