Borneo’s eco-stranded apes with nowhere to call home

[Mike Shanahan]

Who’s that hiding in the trees? It’s a Bornean orangutan, an ape with an unhappy history and an uncertain future.

I saw this orangutan and several others when I took a recent boat journey past Kaja Island in the Rungan River of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The 40-plus orangutans on the island are ‘rehabs’ — creatures that have been confiscated from poachers, found orphaned or rescued from homes where as pets they were subjected to a diet of noodles instead of fruits and tree bark.

Many were rescued from palm oil plantations where they were captured as pests after arriving hungry to feed on the palms.

Read the rest of this post at Under the Banyan