A group of Orangutans are attending forest school
in Indonesia, Sky News report.
The purpose is to teach
them skills like foraging and nest-making in the hope they
can be reintroduced to the wild.
The
animals live at IAR's sanctuary in Ketapang, in Kaliman province in eastern
Indonesia's Borneo island, and rehabilitation could take seven to eight years.
According to Karmele
Llano Sanchez, IAR’s project Director in Indonesia, "When the orangutans
arrive here we try to give them an environment that is as natural as possible,
that is why we created the forest schools.
"And
these forest schools are the forest areas where the orangutans come every day
from the morning until the evening, and they're given the chance to stay
overnight in the forest when they start learning how to make a nest.
"What we want is to try to
replicate what an orangutan will do in the wild, so this is what they will
learn during the process of rehabilitation," he said.
Sky News confirmed that there are
currently 102 orangutans living in the sanctuary, but not all primates attend
the school because some have suffered long-term injuries that mean they can
never return to the wild.
The
population of the endangered species, mainly found in southeast Asia, has
decreased tremendously due to illegal poaching and habitat loss.
Experts say Indonesia, home to
the world's third-largest tropical forest acreage, holds the key to the problem
and needs to put into practice a long-term plan to enforce laws, tackle fires
and spend more on prevention.
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