Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

At the International Animal Rescue centre, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Starting in 2011, Born Free is very pleased to be assisting the efforts of International Animal Rescue (IAR) to care for, rehabilitate and ultimately release rescued orangutans in West Kalimantan. With funding from Adopt An Orangutan boxes sold in WHSmith stores around the UK, Born Free is contributing to the food, treatment and management costs of baby Bunga, helping IAR to give her the best standard of care until such time as she can be returned to the wild.

In August 2009 IAR signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Forestry Department (BKSDA) in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, agreeing plans for the rescue, rehabilitation and relocation of orangutans that have lost their forest habitat to make way for oil palm plantations. The agreement allows for the purchase of land and the creation of facilities where the rescued animals can be rehabilitated before being released back into protected areas of forest.

Currently the IAR team is caring for a growing number of orangutans in a small, temporary rescue centre in Ketapang, West Kalimantan while they work to establish a more permanent facility. Currently there are over 25 individuals at the site, many of them seized from family homes where they were kept as pets, and some voluntarily surrendered, confiscated from hunters or traders, or rescued directly from oil palm plantations. Bunga arrived at the centre in November 2009, when she was about 3 years old. She was collected on request from a family who said they had found her three months earlier and kept her in a cage in their garden.