Episode 4 Orangutan Diary

Last time on Orang-utan Diary, orphans Ellie and Grendon

were in danger when an unwelcome guest gate-crashed their forest lessons.

I was out on the road with a rescue team and saved another baby from a future in captivity.

Back at the centre, little Lomon was making some real progress.

But it was the birth of a baby that left us all holding our breath.

The Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation's single aim

is to ensure a wild future for endangered orang-utans.

All find a safe home here, from babies forcibly taken from their mothers,

to wild adults made homeless by deforestation.

It's hoped that eventually, they'll all be put back into the wild.

For the youngest, like our baby born yesterday,

that's going to be at least six years in the future.

However, one of the centre's biggest inhabitants is about to get his first taste of freedom.

Hey, Zorro!

Isn't he beautiful?

I think the big males really do it for me.

I think they're just absolutely stunning

and Zorro is a cracking-looking fellow, isn't he?

Zorro's time has come.

He's finally going out to the island.

This stereotypical behaviour that he does, this spinning round

is all to do with the fact that he's been kept so confined all his life.

Just how well is he going to adapt to being out of this cage?

This is all he has ever known since he was a child.

And we know that he hasn't climbed a tree since he was with his mum.

Before Zorro was rescued by Lone and her team,

he was kept illegally as a pet for 13 miserable years.

Ooh, hello, Zorro, what was that?

That was strange, wasn't it, big man?

When you wake up, it's going to be somewhere very, very different.

Got hold of that still.

There we go.

Oh, God,

he is a big lad.

Look at the length of those arms!

That's amazing!

Ooh, hello. Ooh, he's still a bit awake.

He doesn't know what's going on.

Being transported in a wheelbarrow seems somewhat undignified for such a magnificent animal

but we need to get him to his new home as quickly as possible.

Homes for orang-utans in Borneo are getting hard to come by.

Scientists predict that if nothing is done to halt the destruction of the rainforests,

orang-utans will become extinct within ten years.

The centre constantly battles to give rescued orang-utans a second chance.

A vital part of the rehabilitation process is teaching the younger ones

all of the skills they'll need to survive in the wild.

With classes just beginning out in Forest School One,

I'm going to check up on a very special orphan, Lomon.

I reckon the star pupil of Forest Group One,

who definitely gets the medal for improvement, is Lomon.

Look at him, Mr Independent.

He's off out into the forest looking for his own food.

And actually, it's remarkable the way he's finding stuff to eat.

He hasn't been shown a lot of these plants,

which suggests that maybe he remembers them from being with his mum in the wild.

It's been amazing to watch his progress.

He was so shy and so introverted and so thin,

not eating or drinking anything - and now look at him.

He's out, he's on his own, he's moving around.

Got to get you climbing a bit more next, haven't we?

I know you're not supposed to have a favourite, but...

there's something about Lomon, he's such a character, he's such an individual.

With Zorro under sedation, we can now safely ferry him to his new home.

I'm travelling out with Lone Droscher-Neilson, the director of the centre.

The islands lie a few miles down river.

They're the last stage in the rehabilitation process.

Apart from two food deliveries a day,

the orang-utans here are left completely to their own devices.

Most of the islands' inhabitants tend to be orphans that have grown up at the centre,

but Zorro is a different case.

Even though he's a fully grown adult, he's never had the chance to live in the forest.

He's been trapped in a cage ever since he was a tiny baby.

We've no idea how he's going to react when he feels all that space and fresh air around him.

Lone, why do you put them on the feeding platforms?

You know, sometimes they sit on that feeding platform and think that's their new cage.

Ah, OK. I suppose that makes sense because this will be the point he explores from,

so he'll always know this is home to start off with,

until he gets used to it.

But they're so different. We had Mama Mosey,

who sat on that feeding platform thinking it was her cage.

She didn't move, like the floor was her cage

-though there were no bars.

-How long did she stay there?

-About three days.

-But then she started...

Then she started to climb trees and back again.

We've had some that has been in captivity for 12 years,

you put them out and they're off in the trees immediately,

-and others that just can't figure it out.

-Yeah.

It's incredible to think that when Zorro regains consciousness,

it'll be the first time he's seen a forest in 13 years.

In Forest School One, the orang-utans are continuing to learn skills

that will one day allow them to live independent lives in the wild.

The perseverance with the climbing lessons for Lomon continues.

Now, we know that Lomon just eats a lot now, so,

we put some oranges on the end of a stick,

Lomon, Lomon! And we try to encourage him up the tree.

But Lomon is not a stupid orang-utan

and he knows there's some very easy ones on the ground in here.

Lomon, come, Lomon,

look, Kesi will show you how.

Lomon, look, watch Kesi.

Up we go with the oranges. Kesi.

And with her one arm, look at that!

No problem.

Lomon, tree, climb, come!

Kesi has really come along since she's been at Forest School One.

Despite losing one of her hands before she was rescued,

she climbs like a natural and loves playing with her classmates.

It's great to see how Kesi, Lomon and the other orphans here

have really thrived on the love and attention given by the baby-sitters.

It's amazing! We may not be able to get Lomon to climb,

but he is showing an interest in nest-building.

I know it's not a very good nest, but it's a start.

Now that nest should be in the tree, Lomon. Yes!

It's amazing in this group. You've got real characters.

You've got Lomon the eater, you've got the little biter,

you've got Kesi the climber and you've got Vanilla the stealer.

MICHAELA LAUGHS

So come on, Lomon, snack time over. It's back to climbing lessons.

Hey.

-Oh!

-SHE LAUGHS

You know, I thought we were getting somewhere.

Come, Lomon, come. Up the tree, look, see, there.

There! Then you do that.

I've got you.

There! Well, it's a start.

There, see, you CAN do it.

Is that high enough for you?

I feel we've made a bit of progress!

Just going to roll him on his back again

so he's in a better position for waking up.

Oh, oh, here we go, hang on to that, hang on to that, not on to me.

There you go, good lad, there we go.

-Don't fall down.

-Don't, stay there!

Hang on.

That's a good lad, ooh, have a pee.

So roughly how long is he going to stay on here?

What's the plan for the ones that come to the island?

They're all individual but we hope at least three seasons,

that means two fruiting seasons and one dry season.

Ah, right, OK, and the dry season is the important one

for them to learn how to cope out in the wild?

Yes. They need to learn they can eat grasses, they can eat leaves,

they can eat bamboo and other things as well.

He's almost completely round now.

He's still a bit groggy but we're happy now to leave him.

It's going to take him some time to really get used to this new environment.

So for the first few days, there's going to be somebody with him constantly.

One of the technicians will be around to make sure he's not getting into any mischief.

You all right? Hm?

There's never a dull moment here at the centre.

This tiny little baby orang-utan that's in quarantine

has managed to escape twice from this cage

and the way that it's done it is,

you see these, it's actually managed to undo it,

pull it off, open the door and get out.

It seems crazy, doesn't it? For this tiny little Houdini,

they've had to resort to a huge chain.

Now it seems very sad to see this little guy all on his own in here,

but he's actually in here while his mother is being treated with a broken arm

and he's obviously so desperate to get back with her,

the bond is so great that he's doing anything to get out of this cage.

This is where little Houdini's going to see his mum again.

These orang-utans were rescued from an oil palm plantation about three weeks ago,

so they're still very wild and they're still very wary of people.

Hopefully, these two won't have to be in this cage for too long,

it just depends how long it takes for the arm to get strong again.

And then because they were caught from the wild,

hopefully they will be able to go back into a safe wild

in the not too distant future.

As Houdini settles in with his mum, another drama is unfolding at the centre.

A baby has just been rescued but this one doesn't have its mum around.

Babies like this will face many years of forest education before they can be released again.

Hey, hey.

We have no idea what condition this baby will be in.

Oops! No, no, no, no.

ORANG-UTAN SQUEAKS

Oh, he's a biter!

Poor little guy!

With its forest home destroyed,

this baby was forced into a palm oil plantation with its mother.

Sadly, its mum was then killed, leaving the little one totally helpless.

It's got quite a few little wounds now.

Poor little guy, he must just not know what's going on.

He'll go into a cage soon.

Although he's obviously traumatised,

it's important to give him a quick health check

and treat any physical injuries.

What do you reckon that's from, Lone?

It's probably from barbed wire or something.

LONE SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE

Stings.

We won't take any blood from him today because he's a bit stressed.

We'll wait for those, there are some other ones coming back from the rescue,

so we'll take blood from him when they come back.

This is yet another victim of the palm oil industry.

Yet another orang-utan that's lost its mother.

He's a strong little guy.

I suppose he's got four hands.

It's going to take quite a while for our big male, Zorro, to recover,

so I'm catching up with my best mates, Ellie and Grendon, pupils in Forest School One.

If these babies were still with their mums out in the wild,

one of the most important things they would be learning

is what to eat when times get hard.

We all know that the orang-utans love to eat fruit but during the dry season,

there's very little of that about, so they'll have to find something else.

If you look around the forest,

there are thousands of different species of plants available, but which are edible?

To be honest, I've no idea, but the baby-sitters do.

You've done this before.

Right, cool.

How to find the right food is yet another of the many skills

orphaned orang-utans have to learn from the baby-sitters.

Ah, not immediately obvious, but this is the stuff.

Researchers have followed orang-utans out in the wild

so they do know which species of plants are edible and which ones are suitable.

You need to get it right because,

look at this plant, it's got very similar sort of leaves,

but who knows, this one might be poisonous, it might be toxic,

so you've got to get it right.

Thank you.

Come on then, come and get it.

Come on...

It's not just knowing which plants to eat,

it's knowing how to eat them and Grendon has been given this plant before

and he knows it's not the leaves he's interested in, it's actually the pith.

It's the central part of the stem.

This isn't something he's learned instinctively.

This is something he's been shown, he's been taught how to do this

and that's a very valuable lesson. Here you go.

Come on!

Good lad!

No?

And with that lesson over, Grendon's decided it's time to put his feet up.

Nests are all well and good but you can't beat a good hammock, just ask Grendon!

It's early afternoon and time to check up on the baby

that was brought in just a few hours ago.

Goodness knows what trauma this little chap's already been through.

He's lost his mother and been taken from the wild.

More to the point, the wild has been taken away from him and made into a plantation.

Even though he's wild and he's around two-and-a-half,

he'll have to go through four years of rehabilitation

before he can be put back into the wild.

Because they're so dependent on their mothers,

there's no way they can just be put back,

they just simply wouldn't survive.

It's so sad to see it in this cage,

yet this is one of the lucky ones.

With lessons over for the day, it's packing up time for Forest School One

but not all the orang-utans are eager to go home.

SHE SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE

Come on Ellie, come on.

Come on.

Every evening at least one of them stays up the tree.

Today it's Ellie and it's Aggis.

You won't get any food!

Right, we got Ellie caught but Aggis is still up there

so we'll try the old "Come on, we're leaving, you'll get left behind" trick.

The weird thing is, if you listen,

you can hear all over this forest, in all the other sort of classes,

there's probably one of each class still up a tree

because they're all shouting.

You get to this time of day and it's just, "Come on!"

If you want to be a baby-sitter,

I think you need to write on your CV "patience of a saint".

Come on. It's time to go.

HE LAUGHS Excellent.

Yeah, these guys really know what they're doing, don't they?

That's very good. Well done!

You cheeky monkey!

Right, we can go home now!

As the day draws to a close, all the classes are returning to the centre

and congregating on the lawn.

School's out for the orang-utans.

This is their last chance to play before they're put to bed.

Michaela and I have become so fond of our special pupils,

Ellie, Grendon, Lomon and all the other young orang-utans.

At times like this, it's easy to forget the tragedy

that lies behind every little face.

-How's your day gone?

-Pretty good.

I'm seeing improvement in my little lot.

-We've got Lomon in this group, as you can see.

-Still eating.

-Your professional opinion?

Well, he's definitely fatter,

which is, for him, a very, very good thing.

Is he getting a bit too porky?

I think he's a long, long way off that, isn't he,

but he seems to be a lot happier,

he seems to be in amongst now, he's not having to be fed.

-Is that how you see him?

-Oh, he eats absolutely everything and anything. It's incredible.

But then when you think about it, he is six years old

and most of them here are what, around two?

-Two yes, two-and-a-bit, possibly.

-So he's still got a long way to go.

The thing for me is when you see them all here, out at the end of the day,

and you think every single one of these has lost its mum in a violent way.

And it's just staggering, the size of the problem.

Also when you realise that every single one of these

represents about five that weren't lucky enough to get a second chance.

It is amazing

and it seems to be that every day there's reports of another one, another rescue.

The rescue team has gone out and collected three or four more.

It's just a continuous, continuous cycle.

You can lose that idea when you're sitting there and they look so cute

and they're sort of picking away at stuff and having a lovely time,

but you must remember where they've come from.

It's approaching four o'clock.

The day may be drawing to a close for the young orphans

but for the rescue team, the action just never stops.

We're heading for the very same palm oil plantation

where we made our first rescue.

When I went on that journey,

I couldn't believe the scale of the deforestation,

but this time it seems even worse.

The rainforest home of the orang-utans is disappearing at an alarming rate

and it's principally the palm oil industry that's driving the devastation.

Used in thousands of everyday products,

palm oil is fast becoming one of the world's most popular vegetable oils.

As a result, vast areas of rainforest are being cleared to make way for new plantations.

In the last decade, over five million hectares of orang-utan habitat

has been destroyed by the palm oil industry alone.

As we near the village,

something tells me this could be a very tricky confrontation.

This orang-utan has been kept illegally as a pet.

The owner isn't happy about giving it up.

Well, this is a bit of a surprise.

We came here to actually pick up a wild orang-utan

and this is what we found, this tiny little infant.

They've had it a week. It's so small.

THEY SPEAK NATIVE LANGUAGE

It's obviously quite a sensitive issue here,

whether these people are actually aware of the law,

of the fact that they can't keep this animal.

The whole rescue organisation

is completely dependent on people who work these fields

and work these plantations, actually working with them,

phoning them up and saying, "There is an orang-utan here."

So you can't march in here, you know, slap the cuffs on,

or else you'll never hear about these orang-utans.

We'll never get any of them out of these sort of areas.

So it's gently, gently to start off with

but I know Lone and we're not leaving here without this orang-utan.

THEY SPEAK NATIVE LANGUAGE

Tempers are riding high.

It's difficult to know what will happen.

This is the trickiest rescue we've had so far.

You can see that this isn't a straightforward issue,

and without Lone here fighting for these orang-utans,

they really wouldn't stand a chance.

There's still so far to go...

to get people to understand that you can't keep these animals as pets

and that if we don't start looking after them,

they're not going to be around very long.

-So have we moved past gently, gently now?

-Yes!

OK, I noticed the subtle transition.

What's the state of play at the moment? He's obviously not keen.

He keeps saying, "If you take this one, I'll go and get another one."

-But he doesn't understand he has to kill the mother.

-Yeah.

For this one he didn't kill the mother,

but he doesn't understand you have to do that to get another one.

It is taking just about everybody to convince him.

People will look at this, little guys clinging to you,

and just think they are so cute

but it's just totally inappropriate.

How old do you think this one is?

Probably about seven, eight months old.

SHE SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE

Well, that went smoothly(!)

As you can see, it's quite a fight sometimes.

All we can do is get this one back.

Unfortunately, not all confiscations are straightforward.

But thanks to Lone and her team,

at least one more baby orang-utan has been saved.

Next time on the final episode of Orang-utan Diary,

we find out whether Lomon is ready

to make the grade and move up to the next class.

Who's the star pupil of Forest School One - Ellie or Grendon?

And will Zorro overcome years of solitary confinement

and learn to enjoy life as a wild orang-utan?