91色情片

JARWO the one-armed orang-utan climbs from his box and surveys the pristine
rainforest. The five-year-old has not seen a world like this for years: he was
snatched from the wild as a baby and sold as a household pet. But without
hesitation he makes for the nearest tree and climbs nearly to the top. He sets
it swaying until it slowly bears him towards the next one. Within a few minutes
he is canopy-high, swinging with supreme confidence鈥攖hough in a jerky,
one-armed way.

The humans watching from below sigh as he disappears from sight. This is the
most poignant moment in the rehabilitation of ex-captive orang-utans. The
emotions of parting are sharpened by the knowledge that animals like Jarwo may
not survive. Despite 40 years of orang-utan rehabilitation, methods are disputed
and success rates unknown.

Yet rehabilitation is becoming acutely important as the wild orang-utan
population plummets towards extinction. These dregs of orang-utan society
already make up about 5 per cent of the population in Sumatra and Borneo, which
contain the last remaining orang-utan habitats. That fraction is set to grow
precipitously. Former captives, with their muddled natures, do not command the
same interest as orang-utans in their natural state or those specially nurtured
as study populations. But this ignored group may prove to be crucially important
in pulling the orang-utan back from the brink of extinction.

The plunge in orang-utan numbers is beyond doubt and perhaps beyond remedy.
Illegal logging and forest fires are destroying their habitats at an alarming
rate. Assessing orang-utan numbers is difficult because these are solitary
animals living high in the forest canopy, but best estimates suggest there are
around 25,000 individuals left in the wild. Last May, Carel van Schaik of Duke
University in Durham, North Carolina, predicted that extinction could be as
little as ten years away. He surveyed a section of the Leuser region of Sumatra
using satellite imaging and aerial photography, and found orang-utan numbers had
dropped from 12,000 to 6500 in just six years. There is no reason to think the
situation is any better in Borneo, says van Schaik.

He believes that it鈥檚 not too late to save the wild habitat and the
orang-utans that live there, but others are not so optimistic. 鈥淥rang-utan
conservation aimed at preserving large undisturbed areas will probably end in
the near future, as remaining sites are exhausted,鈥� says Anne Russon, a
specialist in orang-utan psychology from York University in Toronto.
鈥淯nfortunately for orang-utans, survival may lie only in managed populations, in
鈥榙esigner鈥� habitats subject to sustainable and integrated use.鈥�

That鈥檚 where Jarwo and the other rescued animals come in. Their numbers are
burgeoning. In the past decade, around 800 orang-utans have been taken in at the
Wanariset Orangutan Reintroduction Project near Balikpapan in eastern Borneo,
and there are hundreds more at smaller centres throughout Borneo and Sumatra.
Annual intake at Wanariset jumped from 30 in 1996, to 220 in 1998 when forest
fires swept through Indonesia. It has subsided since, with 81 arrivals in 2000.
But the climate of lawlessness in Indonesia means they will keep coming.

The irony is that rehabilitation, which is primarily concerned with the
welfare of individual animals, could prove crucial to the conservation of an
entire species. Rehabilitation began haphazardly around four decades ago as a
sideline for researchers at forest stations who acquired abandoned pets.
Pioneers included a Dutchman called Herman Rijksen, who established a centre in
northern Sumatra, and Birut茅 Galdikas, who still runs a rehabilitation
centre just outside Tanjung Puting National Park on Borneo鈥檚 south coast.
Rijken鈥檚 experiences were to revolutionise the way ex-captive orang-utans are
treated.

By the late 1970s, Rijksen began to suspect he was doing more harm than good.
He realised that releasing ex-captives into forest that already contained wild
orang-utans overburdened the habitat. The wild animals might even lose out
because the rehabilitated animals had human help in hard times. There was also
evidence that diseased former captives had introduced tuberculosis and hepatitis
into the wild. Large numbers of poorly controlled tourists were arriving at some
centres, exposing the orang-utans to infections. The situation was getting out
of control. At Tanjung Puting, animals roamed the research station stealing
food, picking locks and begging from tourists.

So Rijksen closed his station and, along with other academics and
conservationists, drew up improved standards for reintroduction. At the heart of
Rijksen鈥檚 proposals lay the idea that ex-captives should teach each other the
art of wild living. He called for a minimum of human contact and promoted
rigorous methods of disease control. The aims of reintroduction, he argued, were
to deter the trade in orang-utans through the confiscation and punishment of pet
owners, and to safeguard the welfare of individual orang-utans by giving them
sanctuary and then releasing them back into the wild. Orang-utan conservation
was explicitly not an aim.

These ideas put Rijksen in conflict with the promoters of old-style
rehabilitation, especially Galdikas. The debate was at its fiercest in the early
1990s, but the two sides still mistrust each other and criticise each other鈥檚
methods. In 1995, the Indonesian government came down in favour of Rijksen鈥檚
approach, adopting it by law and revoking Galdikas鈥檚 licence to rehabilitate
orang-utans. Rijksen retired recently, but today his theories are being put into
practice by Willie Smits and his team at Wanariset.

Perched on a steep, wooded hillside, the neat buildings and vast cages at
Wanariset exude order. New arrivals are vaccinated, fingerprinted, and samples
of their DNA are taken. They are then put into quarantine for two weeks. They
will be released within six months provided they are at least five years old,
over 13 kilograms, free from disease, and good at socialising and climbing.

Gone are the days when former captives were released into wild orang-utan
populations鈥攖he Indonesian government banned that practice in 1995.
Rehabilitation sites are now chosen for their remoteness from human communities,
or for their lack of economic potential. For Wanariset residents this originally
meant release in lowland forest at Sungai Wain, just outside the town of
Balikpapan. Recently, new releases have gone to the Meratus Mountains, several
hours鈥� journey inland.

Despite their remoteness from poachers and loggers, however, the animals face
formidable obstacles. In the wild, an orang-utan spends its first seven years
with its mother, effectively as an only child, acquiring a wealth of survival
skills. It learns to navigate through forest, building mental maps of distances,
routes and food locations. It achieves a startling dexterity in trees, including
a keen sensitivity to subtle variations in the strength and suppleness of
branches. It learns to identify and obtain up to 400 different foods. A former
captive, by contrast, may have spent its formative years in a small cage eating
noodles and rice.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Rijksen鈥檚 method is that it aims to
promote these missing skills by allowing captive orang-utans to mix with their
peers. Once they are released into the forest, they must rely on the
relationships they formed in the cages for support and the exchange of survival
techniques. Yet, say critics, these interactions are between creatures that are
mostly ignorant of survival skills. What鈥檚 more, adult orang-utans are
semi-solitary animals, not given to much social exchange.

鈥淓xperience with captive orang-utans indicates that orang-utans suffer from
stress if too many are placed together inappropriately,鈥� says Galdikas. 鈥淚t must
be emphasised that orang-utans are not group-living primates.鈥� At Wanariset, a
single cage may contain many animals, providing opportunities for the most
assertive to bully the timid to the point of illness and weight loss. But Smits
and his team argue that, with care, such problems can be avoided. They also
point out that orang-utans have a remarkable latent social capacity and seem
happy to come together in small social units until about the age of eight. This
finding has been crucial to Rijksen鈥檚 approach.

Galdikas argues that pairing an immature animal with a parent figure, such as
an older female, gives it a better chance of learning survival skills. The
reality, however, is that there are few experienced females around. Smits is
gradually making concessions to the alternative approach: using human mentors to
teach the animals survival skills. He now pairs babies with human attendants who
play with them all day and can sleep with them at night in an on-site
dormitory.

Of the 700 confiscated pet orang-utans that arrived at Wanariset between 1991
and 1999, 100 have died, 300 are still there鈥攅ither awaiting release or
unreleasable because of disease or behavioural problems鈥攁nd the rest have
been set free. But their fate is far from certain. Questions about success rates
clearly irritate Smits, whose mind is relentlessly focused on the enormity of
orang-utan poaching and the threat of bankruptcy. 鈥淲e actually don鈥檛 know how
many there are,鈥� he says. He believes, from reported sightings, that at least
half of the 82 apes released in Sungai Wain are still alive.

One reason for the lack of information is that survival rates are hard to
measure. In an attempt to find out how the Wanariset animals are doing in the
wild, Russon looked at their ability to find their own food. Her results, which
will be published soon, were not encouraging: some 18 months after their
release, three orang-utans in Sungai Wain were eating between 25 and 50 species
from a possible menu of 180 available in the area. Two were still unaware of key
permanent foods such as termite nests. She found that those younger than six or
seven were unable to work out for themselves how to get at certain foods, no
matter how hard they tried. She also found that released orang-utans did not
like to experiment, preferring to eat new foods only when they saw others eat
them. 鈥淎lthough orang-utans are exceptionally intelligent, it can take them
years, not weeks or months, to master the skills for obtaining some foods,鈥� says
Russon.

In another study, between May and July 1996, Russon watched a group of 19
orang-utans newly released in Sungai Wain. After two months, seven remained
around the release site and four had been returned to Wanariset with illness or
injuries. Of the eight that disappeared, some had known very little about forest
life and so Russon thinks it unlikely they would all have survived.

Some insist that rehabilitation can only be considered successful when the
orang-utan has survived to reproduce in the wild. There are now three females in
Sungai Wain who have had babies there, and a further two are known to be
pregnant, which translates to a minimum 12 per cent success rate, argues Rondang
Siregar from Cambridge University. Siregar points out that a female released at
the age of 5 may not conceive until 11, so researchers are forced to play a
protracted waiting game if they want these kinds of statistics. But, she
insists, success cannot be measured simply by counting. 鈥淭heir degree of
adaptation to their new environment must be evaluated, and this can only be
measured by comparing behaviour before and after release.鈥�

In the absence of good statistics, rehabilitation will remain a contentious
way to ensure the survival of orang-utans. Siregar is devoting her doctorate to
the subject of evaluation, focusing on a halfway house newly established by
Smits with his project managers Adi Susilo and Nita Boestani. In this nursery
forest, candidates for release can practise their wilderness skills in
comparative safety. Meanwhile, the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction
Project has opened in central Borneo, aiming to combine the individualised,
human approach still advocated by Galdikas with the rigorous professionalism of
Wanariset.

IT IS a humid Borneo night and a row of heavy cages sits outside the
Wanariset centre. Out of each protrudes an unnervingly human-like hand, or a
nose or pair of eyes: these are the 16 orang-utans deemed ready for return to
the wild. 鈥淭omorrow will be the last night they are locked out from anywhere
they want to go,鈥� says Smits with characteristic drama.

The next day a convoy of lorries drives the orang-utans for eight hours
through the prickly dust and heat of an old forestry road. At the end of the
track, men sling the cages onto poles and stagger, four to a pole, along paths
through the green dimness of the Meratus Mountains forest. Soon they reach the
release site where they open the cages and guide the orang-utans into a huge
wooden box on stilts, six metres high. The Sun is close to setting and the
forest is full of sharp citrus smells. Inscribed across the top of the box are
words in Indonesian: 鈥淕ood luck with your work. Live. Die. But in the
蹿辞谤别蝉迟.鈥�

The rangers free the orang-utans at first light. Most鈥攊ncluding
one-armed Jarwo鈥攃lamber swiftly from the box and into the forest. One
orang-utan, Peno, does not seem to trust the strength of the nearest tree. For
an hour he pushes and pulls at it, climbs it and retreats. As he hesitates, a
deep, jagged furrow in his neck鈥攖he legacy of an iron ring鈥攕uddenly
becomes visible.

Long after the others have gone, Peno is still test-driving that first
sapling. He has a lot to learn and life has stacked the odds against him.
However, he now has several advantages over wild orang-utans, including the
attentions of rangers, extra food and a release site far from the incursions of
aggressive humanity. Crucially, he is the highly prized object of a committed
group of humans working full time to ensure his survival. In contrast, his wild
counterparts are being hounded and hunted from their habitat by seemingly
unstoppable forces.

The survival of the likes of Peno and Jarwo may determine the fate of the
orang-utan. They are emotionally scarred, one-armed and ignorant, but they are
struggling to become the ancestors of those that might live in easier times.