KETAPANG, BORNEO, INDONESIA — After being rescued as orphans, two young female orangutans, Butan and Marsela, have been released back into the wild.
Marsela was rescued from a palm oil plantation in Ketapang, a city located on the Island of Borneo in Indonesia. Butan’s fate was much the same, as she was found motherless, alone, and dying from malaria in 2011.
Once residents of the lush Indonesian jungles, the branches and vines they swang on are no more. The forested areas they lived in have been wracked by logging, deforestation and destruction at the hands of man, to make way for palm oil plantations. Palm oil is the cheapest, most tropical vegetable oil on the planet.
The product used in a variety of everyday items on our grocery lists, from candies and baked goods to shampoo, cosmetics, detergents, cleaning agents and even toothpaste. With demand rising and Indonesia set to double its annual palm oil production from 20 million tonnes in 2009 to 40 million tonnes by 2020, Butan and Marsela’s story is devastatingly common.
Last week, the IUCN reclassified the status of the Bornean orangutan from endangered to a critically endangered species. Some estimates project that at current rates, orangutans in the wild could be wiped out within 5-10 years.
After about five years of attending “forest school” and learning survival skills that would allow them to take care of themselves on their own, Butan and Marsela were set to be released back into the jungle by conservation group International Animal Rescue.
The young orangutans were accompanied by a 25-year-old male orangutan, Sabtu, who was rescued earlier this year after wandering into a village after his home was also destroyed.
On June 28, after four days of traveling to Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park, once his cage door opened, Sabtu bolted out of his cage and up into the trees. A day later, the once-orphaned Butan and Marsela did the same.
