Senior Member
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It's great news that the malaria outbreak at Nyrau Menteng (Orangutan Island) is over and preventative measures being taken to try and avoid such a disaster in the future. I got the impression from the "news alert" sent to me from Nyrau Menteng that the death toll from this outbreak was rather high and mostly infants. It must be a heart breaking experience for Lone and the rest of the staff to lose infants they've rescued and been taking care of 24/7 only to watch helplessly as they die from malaria.
Malaria and other diseases have always been a problem in the rain forest in Borneo, and most likely will continue to be a problem. The steps the rescue center is taking to cut down on the mosquito population will most likely offer some reduction in malaria, but it certainly won't eliminate it.
While I've never been to Nyrau Menteng I do know from their own statements, and from individuals who have been there, that there is a major over-crowding problem at the rescue and rehab center. That is not a good situation to begin with but when disease strikes and so many orangutans are being housed so close together like that it practically invites a disastor such as the one that just occurred. It is exactly this situation which I voiced concern over and warned about several times in the past to individuals involved with Nyrau Menteng. In all fairness to the staff at Nyrau Menteng the problem of over-crowding there is one that they have always been attempting to alleviate. They are almost constantly expanding, building new cages and new forest school areas. I believe the biggest obstacle in their way is, as always, funding. Expanding means buying more land, hiring building contractors, buying building materials and hiring more staff members once the expansion is complete. At the same time more and more orphaned infants, abused, illegally kept pets and orangutans rescued from the animal trade are arriving at the center on a daily basis. The cost to rescue just one orphaned orangutan, feed it, house it, provide medical care and staff to take care of and train these orphans so that they might some day be released back into the wild is "staggering" to say the least. As the palm oil plantations continue to expand rapidly destroying more and more of the orangutans rainforest home, more mother orangutans are slaughtered every day sending even more orphans (at least the lucky ones!) to the gates of Nyrau Menteng. As the palm oil plantations continue to expand at a fantastic rate they create "two problems" for orangutan survival in the wild. First the baby orangutan's whose mothers have been slaughtered right in front of them end up at Nyrau Menteng (at least the lucky few do, while others are not so lucky). Then once these infants are taught how to be orangutans and are able to survive in the wild, on their own, they can only be released if there is rainforest containing no resident population of wild orangutans, to release the rehabilitated orangutans into. Rainforest to release them into is very difficult to find, since it is the destruction of the rainforest that sent them to the rescue center in the first place! It must be a truly disheartening experience and extremely frustrating experience for Lone and her staff. It's like trying to paddle UP a raging river! "IF" the orangutans can be saved at all, it will only be possible with a great deal of devotion and assistance from people all over the world. We must support Nyrau Mentengs efforts, do our best not to use any products containing palm oil, and write letters or send emails of protest to those companies using palm oil in there products and there are A LOT of these companies; even here in the U.S.A. Our new President wants "alternative fuels, renewable fuels" of which palm oil is considered a renewable/green fuel! Bio diesel is made from palm oil. While palm oil can be considered renewable, the cost of this renewable fuel is the permanent extinction of wild orangutans and many other animals found nowhere else in the world. To me; that price for renewable fuel is TOO HIGH!
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