A Malaysian orangutan sanctuary where baby apes wear diapers, sleep in cots and are cared for by nurses dressed in masks and starched uniforms has drawn the wrath of environmentalists.
At Orangutan Island in Malaysia’s north, tourists snap photos as they file past large windows looking onto a facility billed as the world’s only rehabilitation and preservation facility for the endangered primates.
Behind the glass, adorable baby orangutans like two-month-old Tuah lie swaddled in nursery sheets and cling to baby rattles.
“He is separated from the mother because his hands got entangled in the mother’s hair and was unable to breastfeed,” said D. Sabapathy, the facility’s chief veterinarian.
Tuah lies calmly in his cot with his eyes wide open and hands across his chest, hooked up to cables monitoring his heart beat and oxygen levels, ignoring the passing parade.
WILD ANIMALS
But the care lavished on the animals, which are fed every two hours by a staff of seven nurses on duty round the clock, is lost on environmentalists, who say this is no way to treat wild animals facing the threat of extinction.
Managers of the 14 hectare island, which is part of a resort hotel development, say they aim to return the animals to their natural jungle habitat, but so far none have been released.
“It is ridiculous to have orangutans in nappies and hand-raised in a nursery. How are they going to reintroduce the primates back in the wild?” senior wildlife veterinarian Roy Sirimanne said.
Sirimanne, who has worked in zoos in Southeast Asia and the Middle East over the past four decades, said baby orangutans need to be with their mothers to learn survival skills.
“First, we need to save their habitat, which is quickly disappearing. And it is the mother that will teach its young for the first four years or more on what to eat and how to look for food,” he said.
“Keeping the orangutans in captivity on an island is not a conservation program. It amounts to desecration [of the species] as it is nearly impossible to reintroduce them back to the forest,” he said.
Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia’s eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island.
FAR FROM HOME
But Orangutan Island is situated in the north of peninsular Malaysia, far from the jungles of Borneo, where the orangutan’s natural habitat is being lost to logging and palm oil plantations.
A 2007 assessment by the UN Environment Program warned that orangutans will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if deforestation continues.
The Malaysian branch of conservation group Friends of the Earth said the best way to save the orangutan is to address rampant poaching and shrinking habitats.
“We are opposed to the orangutan sanctuary. We are opposed to this theme park resort having wildlife in captivity,” Friends of the Earth president Mohamad Idris said.
“Captive-bred orangutans have no natural resistance against diseases, making them susceptible,” he said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS