A UK charity has helped rescue two baby orangutans (猩猩) who were found by the police in West Borneo caged and ready to be sold through social media to illegal buyers. A man was arrested for the illegal deals of wildlife both directly and by using online social media sites. The two orangutans, a one-year-old male and an eight-month-old female, who were discovered in tiny cages are now in the care of International Animal Rescue (IAR) at its centre in Ketapang, Borneo.
A spokeswoman for the charity based in Uckfield, East Sussex, said,"The general condition of the two orangutans is fair, although both are in the state of being in extreme danger and needing urgent help. One of them is rocking back and forth—this is an abnormal behaviour presented by animals in extremely stressful conditions."
David Muhammad, head of the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said the orangutans were captured by a hunter in Sintang, Indonesia, and collected by the arrested man who was selling them for about ￡175. Orangutans in Borneo have experienced rapid declines of up to 60% in the last 50 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The Bornean orangutan is now declared "critically endangered" as forests shrink. The two new arrivals bring the total number of orangutans in IAR's centre in Ketapang to 111.
Karmele Llano Sanchez, programme director of IAR Indonesia, said, "Having such a large number of orangutans undergoing rehabilitation(康复), with more having to be rescued, makes it harder and harder to find safe places where we can release them. If we do not address the root cause of the problem, we will never stop the decline of orangutans in the wild."
