So it was with much excitement, and a marginal dose of trepidation, that I donned the brown shoes and ventured into the Rasa-Ria Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, conveniently located next to our Resort.
The Rehabilitation Centre was established in 1996, and serves as the nursery for the larger centre at Sepilok. Caring for a handful of baby orphaned Orangutans, the Rasa-Ria conservation team help teach the young how to swing, find food, nest and live in the wild. The baby Orangutans have been either rescued from the illegal pet trade or found by farmers and surrendered to the Centre.
There's the rub. Orangutans are arboreal, living in trees and eating mainly fruit. Since the commercial demand for Palm Oil has increased over recent years, their natural environment has dramatically reduced as thousands of hectares of wild jungle has been wiped out and replaced by Palm Oil plantations. Interspersed through the plantations are pockets of traditional farmers growing fruits and vegetables, both for local and export markets. Hungry-Mummy Orangutans are forced to traverse the farms to find food. And when they find some lovely bananas or dragonfruit - they scoff it. Farmer shoots Hungry-Mummy as he needs to sell his fruit to feed his family. Baby Orangutan is hiding in the bush - now with no food and no Mummy. Sometimes - not always - the farmer finds the baby and contacts the Conservation Rangers who come and collect the orphan and bring it to the Centre.
As we watched an informative video that clearly presented the above message, I wondered how many babies are not discovered. Or how many are sold into the illegal pet trade...
Video and safety briefing completed, we walked for about 10 minutes before arriving at a Feeding Platform. This is a marvel of eco-tourism. The Centre feeds their residents twice a day, with a mixture of fruit and a few nuts and leaves. So a (worryingly-Cave-Creek-like) structure is set into the hillside beside the platform on which the Orangutans have breakfast and dinner daily. They eat, we watch. They play, we watch. They swing, we watch. They poo into their hands, we watch.
But this is not a zoo. We are within metres of the feeding platform, and arms outstretched, we could touch the vines. At one stage, a lanky teenage Orangutan saunters across the viewing platform through the crowd of 40 or so people. Squeals of excitement radiate alongside the rapid-fire sound of cameras clicking en-masse. Whilst I knew before we left NZ that there would be no fences or barriers (and therefore nothing like a zoo), it suddenly was very real and very worth travelling half way around the world for.
