Orangutan Diary (2007) s02e09 Episode Script

MICHAELA: Today on Orangutan Diary, Lone has found a safe area of forest and is on the verge of one of the most ambitious releases she's ever attempted.
But will feisty adolescent Mustopa put a spanner in the works? These hormonal males are just like impossible to predict what they're gonna do.
And after spending a year in a cage, Mama and Baby Pika are just a step away from a life back in the wild.
(ORANGUTAN GRUNTING) (LAUGHING) Is that so funny? Lone Droscher Nielsen runs the biggest ape rescue operation in the world.
The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation cares for more than 600 orangutans.
Some were confiscated from the illegal pet trade.
Others were rescued from the wild when their forest homes were ripped from under them.
And as the destruction continues, time may be running out for Borneo's orangutans.
But the team here do everything they can to rescue, care for and, ultimately, return orangutans back to the wild.
STEVE: After months of planning and negotiation, Lone is finally ready to get one of the biggest releases the centre has ever attempted, underway.
Twenty five orangutans are about to get a second chance at life in a safe area of forest.
They haven't been in cages long and are still very wild.
(SQUEAKING) These were all brought in as adults so they know how to survive in the wild and, more importantly, as you can see with this behaviour here, this kiss-squeaking and all this swinging around, they're still frightened of humans.
And that's what's gonna keep them safe.
They know how to survive and they don't wanna be anywhere near people.
STEVE: That said, for the next few days, they'll be surrounded by medics, technicians and a whole host of people helping to make sure they arrive healthy.
They'll be tranquilised for the journey, so they'll sleep through most of it and hardly remember a thing.
It's all running with military precision, except for one difficult customer holding everything up.
(GRUNTING) Mustopa, a fiery adolescent male is causing all kinds of problems for Bram, one of the medics.
It's so difficult because he's angry with the blow dart and very aggressive.
It's so difficult because he moves to the left, right, up and down.
STEVE: All the commotion attracts one of the orangutans from Forest School.
Like the rest of his school mates, he's an orphan that grew up at the centre.
He's never seen a huge, wild orangutan like Mustopa before and is fascinated and even a little terrified.
It's okay.
Oh, is he really big? You see, is he really big? He saw Mustopa and he just went all goosebumpy and went like, "God! What is that?" LONE: You've never seen such a big one before, have you? NARRATOR: Finally, Bram gets his shot.
In a few minutes, Mustopa will be able to join the others orangutans on the last truck to the airport and start his journey back to the wild.
It's hoped that, one day, even the orphaned orangutans raised in Forest School can make a similar journey.
But Lone's priority is to get adult orangutans like Mustopa out first.
He's had minimal human contact, so a better chance of survival.
Unfortunately, with so many wild orangutans coming in, the Forest School orangutans are continually bumped to the back of the cue.
In fact, right now, it's hard to see them ever reaching the front.
(CHATTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (LAUGHING) Are you being a little bit brave here now, are you? Look at this big guy.
STEVE: In a strange way, these orangutans are lucky.
They were rescued from marginal and rapidly shrinking patches of forest, where, eventually, they would've been killed or starved to death.
But now they're heading to one of the largest areas of safe orangutan habitat left in Borneo.
Airlifting 25 orangutans into one of the remotest and most inaccessible forests on Earth is a logistical nightmare for Lone.
There are so many people, agencies and departments involved and it only takes one link to fail for the chain to break and send her back to square one.
(LONE SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (ALL LAUGH) The release has already been delayed by over two months.
And some of these orangutans have spent nearly a year in a cage waiting for this flight.
Lone is desperate to get them back out quickly, while they're still wild.
But nothing can be left to chance, especially when you've got powerful orangutans like Mustopa on a small plane.
LONE: We haven't had anybody who's tried to escape yet.
So, I'm not too worried about it, but, because he is a hormonal male, and we're going to be 50 minutes on that flight.
I really do not want him to, sort of, break out.
I mean, him escaping, you know, being in midair, I'm not quite sure the captain is going to appreciate that.
LONE: But these hormonal males are just like almost impossible to predict what they're gonna do.
They're normally very quiet on the planes because of the sound.
So they don't know what's going on around them, it's dark, it's noisy, so they, very often, just sit really quiet inside the cage.
MICHAELA: At the centre, orangutans occasionally escape from their cages and it's not always straightforward getting them back in.
An adolescent male, a little younger than Mustopa, has got loose.
At this size, he's already many times stronger than the technicians.
If he doesn't want to come quietly, there's not a lot the staff can do, except keep him distracted until one of the medics can deal with him.
It's obvious now why Lone was so careful to secure Mustopa's cage before takeoff.
He's even bigger than this guy and the thought of him loose in the aircraft isn't a good one.
STEVE: Flying hundreds of feet above the forest, the precious cargo of orangutans is getting close to its destination.
Everything is calm at the moment.
One of the females, sort of banging around a bit in her cage.
Usually, they sleep during the flight, or they're so scared, they just sit inside their cages and just hold on.
It's a bit of stress, obviously, then, later, when they're gonna go in the helicopter as well, is also a bit stressful but, after that, they're free again.
STEVE: The plane has landed on an isolated airstrip.
It belongs to a mining company who've worked in this remote area since the 1970s.
They've helped Lone release orangutans before and the relationship she's built up with them is invaluable.
This air strip is the fastest way of getting them deep into the jungle and to freedom.
For the local children, who normally use the runway as football pitch, the arrival of a plane full of orangutans is intriguing enough to stop play.
Just up the road is the mining camp, a tiny island of human activity in a vast sea of forest.
It's a very strange place.
The neatly-trimmed lawns and wooden chalets feel totally at odds with the wild surroundings.
But, without this outpost, releasing the orangutans would be virtually impossible.
The cages Lone had specially made for a previous release are still standing and filling up with orangutans again.
All these ones that are already in cages now, already arrived yesterday.
They came in, we had two flights yesterday and one flight today.
As you can tell, they're a little bit stressed because there's quite a lot of people around right now.
They'll calm down soon, though.
STEVE: It may seem like just another cage to the orangutans, but it's only a short stay to give them a chance to stock up on food before the final leg of their journey.
(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Like all the orangutans being released, Mustopa has had very little human contact since being rescued.
Out in the wild, his natural fear of humans should keep him safe and away from possible conflict with people.
Mama Pika and her baby have already learnt this lesson and paid the price.
They were found wandering hungry in a palm oil plantation.
But they were lucky, Lone got to them in time, and, tomorrow, Baby Pika will start her new life back in the wild.
When we got Pika, she was about two years old.
So she's already lived in the wild.
She's only been in a cage for the last, a little bit less than a year.
Now she's gonna go back in the wild again.
I don't think she's ever gonna remember that she's actually ever been in a cage.
MICHAELA: Pika is lucky.
She still has her mother, which means she can be raised in the wild.
But the majority of baby orangutans at the centre are orphans.
Kopi is the latest to arrive.
She was found in a palm oil plantation.
Her mother was probably killed by hunters, hired to protect the plantation from uninvited guests like orangutans.
Without her mother, it's going to be hard for Kopi to get back to the wild.
At three years old, she couldn't survive on her own.
But, at the moment, she's too wild to join Forest School.
It's a dilemma the staff had been mulling over, until Kopi took matters into her own hands.
At the first opportunity, she makes a bolt for it.
Her instincts tell her that she's safe in the trees.
In the wild, she'd rarely come down.
And she could spend years without ever touching the ground.
The speed and ease with which Kopi moves between the branches, shows how at home she is up in the trees and she's desperate to be where she belongs.
(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Orphaned and too wild to join the others in Forest School, it's hard to know where she'll fit in.
If only she'd arrived with her mother, she would've been top of the list for release.
(THUNDER RUMBLING) As the rain starts to fall, the technicians have to leave Kopi in the trees.
They'll come back later when she's hungry and see if she can be tempted down with some fruit.
STEVE: Lone's leaving the mining camp and taking another 40-minute flight to the first release site.
Here she can set up a base camp and prepare for the orangutans to be airlifted in.
Borneo was once entirely covered in pristine forest like this.
But over half has been cut down for timber and to grow oil palms.
Palm oil is big business.
One billion people around the world consume it.
It's in everything from biscuits to lipstick.
One in ten supermarket products contain it.
And with growing demands for its use in bio-fuels, the economic incentive for Borneo to destroy its forests and grow even more, is compelling.
Palm oil is now the single biggest threat to the orangutan's survival.
Over 90% of the orangutans Lone rescues, have come from areas being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.
But here, large areas of pristine forests still exist.
So far, its inaccessibility has kept people out.
Tomorrow morning the first orangutans will be airlifted in to release site one, a small clearing just big enough for the helicopter to land.
It's where Lone and the team will be setting up camp for the night.
The helicopter barely touches down.
With light fading fast, the pilot needs to get back to the base camp, leaving the release team to bed down somewhere in the middle of this vast tract of wilderness.
We're right in the middle of Borneo, right smack in the middle, actually.
Within the heart of Borneo, which is a big conservation area between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
There are still logging concessions and mining concessions here.
But these are some of the last frontiers of proper, untouched forests that's left in Borneo at the moment.
I love it out here, because you don't have no hand-phone you have no computer access, you can't get on the internet.
Once we've got the orangutans out, being able to just sit, you know, in a hammock in the forest and listen to the water and the sounds of the forest.
It's lovely.
It gives you a little bit of rest.
STEVE: Early next morning, and Lone hasn't quite had the restful night she was hoping for.
We got invaded by bees like 4:00 in the morning here.
We've been awake since then listening to this humming and a bit of snoring.
Those two guys, my two assistants here, they slept perfectly fine.
They were snoring all night because they kept me awake for most of it, but it's always good sleeping in a tent with a lot of guys.
STEVE: It's been an early start back at the mining camp, too.
The first orangutans are being prepared for the short flight to meet Lone at the release site.
Today, at this particular clearing, we're going to have four adults.
LONE: And then we'll then move on to another clearing to release Pika, with her mother, obviously.
We'd rather give them that second chance out here.
I mean, I can't promise that everybody's gonna make it.
LONE: But they're wild animals, they're intelligent.
Even if 90% of them make it, you know, we still managed to save those 90%, because they would've been killed for sure in the palm oil plantation.
So, at least we managed to save 90% of them.
STEVE: The first orangutans are in the air.
At last, the final stage of the release is underway.
(CHATTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) MICHAELA: For the orangutans at the centre, the wild is still a very long way off, especially for all the orphan babies.
When they arrive at the nursery, some are very traumatised.
All they really need is love and affection.
But, even at this young age, their natural instincts are strong.
At about two years old, they start in Forest School.
The babysitters try to teach them all the skills they'll need.
But it's no substitute for a life in the tree tops.
In the wild, their mothers would've spent eight years teaching them how to be an orangutan.
But so little is known about this intimate relationship, it's hard to know what lessons these Forest School orangutans might be missing out on.
But orangutans are so intelligent and adaptable that, even in this artificial setting, they seem to pick up the skills they'll need.
At about six years old, they're independent enough to live out on islands in the nearby river.
Here, they're fed daily, but human contact is kept to a minimum, because the next step will be to get them out into the wild.
Even though these orangutans have little memory of living outside the centre, Lone is quietly confident that their time in Forest School, their intelligence and instincts, will be enough for them to survive as wild orangutans.
STEVE: At the release site, the first load of orangutans finally swings into view.
Among them is the mighty and unpredictable Mustopa.
He's so strong, he had too be caged from the moment he arrived at the centre, and needs to be handled with extreme caution.
LONE: Mustopa is just like a teenager who's like, "Don't show fear, attack first, " sort of thing and also, you know, just do things before you think about it.
And he is one of those animals that could turn around and run after us instead of running into the forest.
And the more groggy he is, the safer we are.
I don't want him totally out of sedation before we let him out, because I just don't trust him.
I've seen hormonal males before and they can be, potentially, very dangerous.
STEVE: The release team move well back, just in case Mustopa comes out like a rocket.
The dubious honour of opening his cage falls to the reluctant Ahmat.
He's eating, is he? (LAUGHS) LONE: So much for this really aggressive male rushing out of the cage.
STEVE: Mustopa has decided he's the boss.
And things will happen at his pace.
Since he's still feeling the effects of the anaesthetic, that's pretty slow.
It took three doses to put him down, so he's still very groggy.
STEVE: Lone would love to stay and watch Mustopa find his feet, but more orangutans are already on the way to the next release site.
LONE: It's gonna take a while before he feels good again.
I sort of suspect he's probably gonna be sleeping somewhere on the ground tonight because he's still too woozy.
STEVE: When he was rescued, Mustopa was an immature male, but he returns to the wild as an impressive young adult.
His cheek pads have grown, and he'll soon be looking for females to father a new generation of orangutans here.
It's important for the team to spread the orangutans out.
It takes a huge area of forest to support each one.
In one of these cages, is Mama and Baby Pika.
It's an extra special moment for the team to see Pika given the chance to grow up in the wild.
For Lone, it embodies everything she and all the staff at the centre work so hard for.
I can hear somebody moving in here but I can't see if it's the mother or the baby.
(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) STEVE: Mama Pika and her infant have spent a year in a cage waiting for this moment.
A year Lone has spent finding this safe area of forest and organising their return to the wild.
It's a lot of time, it's a lot of money investing in a wild animal, but, on the other hand, I think they're worth single dollar that we put into it.
LONE: I don't think you can put a price on an animal that's going extinct.
I don't think you can, sort of, say, it's not worth it.
For us, getting to the end of this road is like, it's so wonderful.
It's probably one of the most wonderful feelings that a human can experience.
It's a sort of love in many ways to these animals.
It's like giving them back what they deserve.
STEVE: With her traumatic time in captivity behind her, Baby Pika now stands a chance of living the natural life she should.
Over the next two days, all 25 orangutans will be released in this river basin.
Like Mustopa and Baby Pika, everyone is being given back the freedom that humans had taken from them.
LONE: Every single orangutan here that we're releasing now can be actually saved from being killed.
For us, getting them out and seeing them just take off into the trees, it makes me feel very, very happy.
It's probably the best feeling in the world.
They'll spread out and they'll find their own little territories and settle down and become real orangutans again.
It's just been a fantastic experience this time.
It took a lot of planning, but, you know, it's gone really well.
I think the best thing is probably seeing this fantastic forest here along the Banana River.
I've flown over it, it looked absolutely wonderful.
But sitting here, thinking, this is, probably, the most fantastic spot for the orangutans to be released.
So, after this it's back to the centre again, where we've had, just before I left, in the last two days, we had seven more orangutans coming in.
It really is a never-ending job.
STEVE: Despite all her efforts, orangutans arrive at the centre faster than Lone can release them.
Time really is running out for the entire species.
It's been predicted that, in just 13 years, only two percent of the orangutan's Indonesian forest could remain.
Lone is doing some incredible work to help save a species on the brink of extinction.
But it's not a solution.
It's a sticking plaster trying to cover an ever-expanding wound left by Borneo's disappearing forests.
MICHAELA: Next week on Orangutan Diary, we'll be taking a last look at the orangutans that have captured our hearts.
And what the future might hold for them.