Orangutan Diary (2007) s02e10 Episode Script

Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation is the world's largest ape rescue operation.
Over the last few weeks, we've followed Lone and her dedicated team, as they try and look after 600 orangutans.
Babies in the nursery needing 24-hour care, orphans in Forest School learning the skills they'll need in the wild and older orangutans who've graduated to the river islands and are almost ready for release.
We've seen babies confiscated from the illegal pet trade, and adults rescued from the wild when their forest homes were ripped from under them.
Join us as we look back at some of the highlights of our time here.
Following the team as they rescue, care for and return orangutans back to the wild.
Now, we don't want you to think that filming orangutans is easy.
These guys are into everything.
They're extremely inquisitive and mischievous and camera crews are still quite a novelty around here.
Every piece of equipment is seen as a toy to be climbed on, pulled apart, or run off with.
Get off! And they have a huge advantage over us.
They have twice as many hands.
STEVE: Following the lives of the Forest School orangutans had its own unique challenges.
But it was the rescue team that gave us some of our most dramatic moments.
Calls to the centre telling us that there were orangutans needing to be rescued came in almost weekly.
And the guys just had to pick up their stuff and get on the road.
The rescues themselves could last from a few hours to a matter of days.
And whenever the Orangutan Diary team got on board and headed out, they never knew for how long, or what to expect.
News of an orangutan that needed rescuing had come in.
Details were sketchy, but the team had to check it out.
It was the first time our crew had ventured deep into rural Borneo.
We've being travelling for about seven hours.
And I've got a sneaking feeling we're nowhere near.
STEVE: After driving through the night, they reached a village the next morning.
From here the journey continued, this time by boat.
(CHILDREN CLAMOURING) There's a lot of prestige associated with being part of the rescue team.
Each member is handpicked for his skills.
Miko is a medic and sharpshooter.
Tam Pong is the team's driver and mechanic.
And Leo is a seasoned tracker and champion climber.
And we were about to see what made these guys so special.
The orangutan had been spotted in a river plantation, on the edge of a patch of swamp forest.
Starving orangutans will eat anything, including the valuable rubber local people harvest from these trees.
It's something they could be killed for.
MAN 1: They have orangutan? MAN 2: Where is it? STEVE: It was vital the orangutan was found and moved to a safe area away from people.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) But the rescue team soon found more than they'd bargained for, two orangutans.
(CHUCKLING) Two.
Not one.
STEVE: In the wild, adult orangutans are rarely seen together, unless they're breeding.
But this is no place to start a family, so close to a rubber plantation.
(SCREECHING) (GUN FIRES) The team carry out this kind of rescue all too often.
But, this time, something wasn't quite right.
The female was sedated, but her hand had locked tightly around a branch.
And if she wasn't coming down, someone had to go up.
Miles from the nearest hospital and with no ropes or safety harness, Leo shimmied 60 feet up the vertical trunk.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Hanging on for dear life with one hand, Leo prises the orangutan's fingers loose with the other.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) It looked harsh, but it was vital the team got these orangutans to safety.
MAN 1: Leo, you are the man.
MAN 2: Yeah! Is there something broken? No.
STEVE: When Miko checked her over, he found the reason she could have been killed for being here.
This is rubber.
- MAN 3: It eats the rubber? - Yeah, it's rubber here.
And it's still - And it's in its mouth? - Yeah.
STEVE: They found this pair just in time.
Many people in Borneo live hand to mouth.
And some would kill an orangutan to protect their livelihood.
With 90% of the orangutans' habitat gone, this kind of conflict is increasingly common.
And finding anywhere to put rescued orangutans is getting harder all the time.
Rather than joining the long line of orangutans waiting for release at the centre, the team decided to take this pair some distance up river to a quieter area of forest.
(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) They couldn't guarantee their safety, but at least farther from people, there was a chance they could start a family in peace.
(EXCLAIMING) For the rescue team, who risked their lives for this moment, it was another small but vital success in the struggle to save Borneo's orangutans.
Relocating rescued wild orangutans into safe areas of forest is the best possible outcome.
But when the orangutan being rescued are orphan babies, then they come here to the nursery.
The little orphans here are given love and round-the-clock care by a team of surrogate moms.
They're such charming characters at this age that it's easy to have favourites.
But when the newest arrival came in, it was Lone who took a real shine to little Arnold.
Our little fellow here came in last night about 8:00.
He's very strong.
He's only probably a month or two months old, and he's still Look at this.
I mean, he's just hanging on.
And having fun.
Is it fun? Is it? Is that fun? Hmm? MICHAELA: It was so spellbinding watching Lone and Arnie, that it was easy to forget, just the day before, he could have been clinging to his mother in the wild.
Looking around the nursery, it was all too common a story.
We get a lot of this size orangutans.
Pickle, Peanut, they came in at the same size.
You need a lot of energy to take care of these little ones because they can go at it all day.
(LAUGHING) MICHAELA: In spite of their very traumatic start, the orphans here had a huge appetite for life, and Peanut and Pickle always seem to be in the thick of it.
After a hard day learning what it takes to be an orangutan, an exhausted Peanut and Pickle always found love and reassurance in the arms of their surrogate mums.
LONE: The most important thing here, definitely, is love and attention.
Lots of cuddles, making them laugh.
We sort of have a little rule of thumb here, that you have to make them laugh for at least half an hour a day.
MICHAELA: It'll be a long and difficult road back to the wild for these little ones.
But Lone and her dedicated team will be with them every step of the way.
Without their mums, this is their family now.
Watching Peanut and Pickle play in the trees, it's hard to imagine the trauma that all these babies have been through.
But they're constantly coming into the centre and I'm gonna check out the two latest arrivals.
STEVE: Their story started when Siska, one of the vets, responded to reports of a baby orangutan being held captive in a remote village.
She had to get there before it was sold into the illegal pet trade or died in captivity.
But a few days' heavy rain had turned the road into a rutted slippery mess.
It was quite an eye-opener to see the huge lengths the team go to, to rescue just one orangutan considered at risk.
Even when the cars could go no further, the team hopped on to mopeds to take them further into the forest.
But luck wasn't on Siska's side.
More rain on the way meant these roads would soon be impassable.
In a last, desperate attempt to reach the captive baby, Siska took to the swollen river.
But with all the delays, she wasn't certain the baby would even be there when she arrived.
(WHOOPING) When they finally found the house, no one was home, but Siska was in for a surprise.
Oh, yeah! We find the baby! STEVE: Inside the house was not one, but two baby orangutans.
They're quite healthy, I think.
They're about a year.
I guess they killed the mother and take the baby.
That's what happen commonly here.
STEVE: With the owner out, it was tempting to take the orangutans and leave.
But Siska needed to explain to whoever had done this why it was wrong.
But when the owner turned up carrying a gun, the team had to do some fast talking.
Mr Sukiyanto from the Forest Department explained that it's illegal to keep or sell orangutans as pets and the best place for them is in the wild.
But to a poor family like this, each baby orangutan is worth about a month's wages.
(CHATTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) They were understandably reluctant to give them up.
But with a careful blend of encouragement and education, the family were finally persuaded.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) The discussion went well and they agreed to give us the orangutans.
So, soon, we can bring the orangutans back home to our place.
That's a very good ending.
(CHUCKLING) (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) - Hey, Siska.
- Hey! So these are the two that you confiscated? Yeah.
They're doing very well, by the looks of things.
SISKA: Yeah, they get along with their friends very well.
- Good.
- I'm happy with them, too.
And have you checked them over today? You've had a look at them? - Yeah, I've checked them and - Healthy? - No problem.
- No problems? Oh, that's good.
You must have been on lots of confiscations now.
Do you ever get frightened that people will get angry? - (LAUGHING) Many times.
- STEVE: Okay, yeah.
You're very brave! That's a very brave thing to do.
And what would have happened to these two if you hadn't rescued them, do you think? Um The best possibility? The owner will sell them.
They're cute, they're funny and they're babies.
STEVE: But then they grow big and quite hard to look after.
SISKA: Yeah.
And what's the future for these two now? They have better future here, of course.
If they survive here and get bigger and we can release them into the forest, hopefully, that's the great purpose of this project.
MICHAELA: Lone has over 600 rescued orangutans in the centre at the moment and it's hoped that, one day, all of these orphans will be able to go back to a safe and protected forest.
But before they do that, there's lots of lessons that they need to learn in order to survive.
And lessons start in Forest School with the babysitters and all of the orphans have to go through the process.
Including this little guy.
Hello! This is Nodi.
Now, he may look very at home and confident now, but we followed him on his first day to Forest School, where he wasn't quite so sure of himself.
MICHAELA: We first met Nodi enjoying the peace and quiet of the nursery.
But he was getting too big and boisterous.
It was time for him to move on.
Every morning, around 200 rescued orangutans are led into the forest for their day at Forest School.
Here, under the watchful eye of the babysitters, they can learn all about their natural surroundings.
Wild orangutans can stay with their mothers for eight years before they're confident enough to make it on their own.
But every one of these Forest School orangutans is an orphan.
It makes the long and difficult road to becoming an independent orangutan so much harder.
No wonder Nodi looked a bit overwhelmed.
Hey, Nod.
What is all this? This is a big tree root, isn't it? Yes, it is.
Uh-uh.
This is a big guy, yeah? You've never seen them this big before, have you? MICHAELA: It was amazing to see how quickly Nodi adapted to life in Forest School.
But he wasn't quite ready for this.
Rhuna, one of the largest orangutans in Forest School was playing truant from her own group.
With so many orangutans in the forest, it's hard for the babysitters to keep track of them all the time.
She was easily three times Nodi's size and can be too rough with these little ones.
Luckily, Rhuna was only after a juicy papaya, but seeing this giant on his first day really knocks Nodi's confidence.
There was still so much for Nodi to learn.
Rehabilitating all these orphans is a real challenge.
It'll be five years in Forest School before Nodi's anywhere near ready to face the world as a wild orangutan.
It had been a good first day, but Nodi looked exhausted.
STEVE: As head of the medical team, Dr David Irons was kept constantly busy.
She seems to be walking quite easily on there.
Hey, Nadi.
David was so moved by the crisis facing Borneo's orangutans that he took a break from his job as a doctor in the UK to volunteer here.
As a qualified vet, I was intrigued to find out how David found working with animals rather than people.
DAVID: Orangutans are very, very similar in the way they respond to medication, the types of illnesses they get.
There's hardly any difference in the experience I've had so far.
Some of them have been through massive trauma in their lives.
Have you found that that presents its own challenge? When they first come in, you know, some of them are extremely stressed, extremely frightened.
The things that they have been through You can imagine a child being locked away in a box for, sometimes, years.
Now what sort of state would they come out in? Because stress and unhappiness and, obviously, pain and all these sort of things, actually slow down healing, slow down response to treatment.
And this is one of the first things that we have to broach, is actually making them feel as if they're safe.
STEVE: When we first met Ruthie, she was in a terrible state.
She was so traumatised by her time in captivity that she'd bite herself and anyone who came close.
It took Siska and two helpers to hold her down just to change her dressing.
She's very aggressive and she will bite and scratch, but the bandage has to be changed every day.
We have to just restrain her like this.
When she get irritated, she will get angry, and bite her hands, her arms and, maybe, she will bite her friends.
STEVE: Ruthie desperately needed love and reassurance, but chased everyone away.
But, thanks to the patience and dedication of the babysitters, she started to improve.
She's not such a wild beast as the last few months.
This is a good first step, getting her like this.
Like humans, when orangutans get stressed, they lose their hair.
But, unlike humans, they tend to be able to grow it back again when they're less stressed.
So, hopefully, in the next few weeks, we'll see a full head of hair on Ruthie.
Oh, baby! You feeling better? MICHAELA: And, believe it or not, this is little Ruthie looking so much better.
Look.
All her hair's grown back.
The scabs have gone.
The bandages are off.
And you can see, she's so much more relaxed.
It just goes to show what a little bit of TLC can do.
She's completely turned around.
With 600 orangutans to care for, no two days were ever the same for David.
As we saw one afternoon when, by pure chance, our cameras were rolling and captured a terrible accident.
(WOMAN SCREAMING) (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) (SHOUTING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Sumanto, an orangutan weakened by illness, had fallen 50 feet from a tree, bounced off a concrete wall and hit the ground hard.
Can you get oxygen? MICHAELA: David's years of experience in emergency medicine were desperately needed.
DAVID: So far, there's no obvious major injuries.
The nose bleed could be just a nose bleed, but it also is a possible sign of skull fracture.
The risk is always internal bleeding.
And that's a very difficult thing to diagnose in anybody.
So we just have to keep an eye on pulse and blood pressure, etcetera.
MICHAELA: Having done everything they could, all the medical team could do was wait to see if Sumanto had the strength to pull through.
Hey, Sumanto! You feeling a bit better? MICHAELA: After two blood transfusions, Sumanto's condition stabilised.
But, just days later, his health suddenly took a turn for the worse.
It's okay.
I've had other orangutans in a similar situation and, so far, I guess, realistically, it's been a 50-50 as far as who have survived, and who hasn't.
MICHAELA: With David's help, Sumanto clung on to life for another 24 hours until his strength finally gave out.
DAVID: We did everything we could do.
We gave him blood transfusions, a whole load of other treatments as well.
But I think it's a combination of the fact that he was in quite a poor state to start off with.
And, obviously, a fall like that would actually kill most people right at the beginning.
It was just too much for him.
MICHAELA: Sumanto's death was a real blow to all the staff.
But for every orangutan they lose, they've saved hundreds.
A lot of people will say, "Well, why don't we just use our efforts "in trying to save the wild animals that are still left in the wild, "instead of all these individuals?" But I do think that every life is very, very precious.
Because the wild orangutan are losing their habitat at an amazing rate every single day.
And, in the end, it might be the orangutans that we have here that's gonna save the species.
MICHAELA: It's a sobering thought that the centre Lone set up to look after 100 orphaned babies, could one day be an ark for the entire species.
But everyone here is trying to make sure that day never comes.
STEVE: We followed Lone on two huge operations releasing over 50 rescued orangutans into remote river basins deep in the wild heart of Borneo.
For us, they were the highlight of our time here.
For Lone, they embodied everything she's dedicated half a lifetime to achieve.
Coming into the centre was the best thing that could have happened for the orangutans being released.
They were all rescued from marginal and rapidly shrinking patches of forest, where, eventually, they would have been killed or starved to death.
It was something I'd witnessed firsthand, with this very special mother and infant.
We were there when they first came into the centre.
That's Mama Abut.
And when she arrived with her little baby, she was in a shocking condition.
When she fell from the crate in front of us, it was hard to believe she was still alive.
She was ravaged by hunger.
Wasting away with a need to provide milk for her baby.
Her forest home had been ripped up and replaced with an oil palm plantation, where there was almost nothing to eat.
Fortunately, Lone reached them in time.
Eight months on, and little Abut and her mum had come a long way.
And to see her now, fit and healthy, and her baby looking 100% as well, that's awesome.
Air lifting orangutans into some of the most inaccessible forests on Earth was a logistical nightmare for Lone.
But safe areas to release orangutans are increasingly hard to find.
Over half of Borneo's forest cover has already been logged or cut down to make way for oil palm plantations and still more has been earmarked for development.
Palm oil is now the single biggest threat to the orangutan's survival.
But here, right in Borneo's heart, areas of pristine forests still exist.
Their inaccessibility has kept people out and would hopefully keep Mama Abut and her baby safe.
This is great, this is just the spot.
Nice, open area in the forest.
Chopper's gonna have no problem getting in here and spotting us.
These moments are what the centre is all about, seeing orangutans being given the opportunity of a new life.
Not in a cage or an island, but in the wild, in a forest that everyone hopes will never be ripped from under them.
Come on, Mama.
She's looking.
Oh, Mama.
There you go.
Oh, she's still a little bit sleepy.
There you go.
Look at that baby.
That is a much, much better picture, isn't it? That's what we wanted to see.
All right, it's up to her now.
She's This is her second chance.
It's great, isn't it? If you weren't here, I'd be sobbing.
(BOTH LAUGHING) - I always do.
Yeah, I do.
- Do you? I get a bit emotional about the whole thing.
Good job.
Job well done.
- We've still another 600 to go.
- (CHUCKLING) Yeah, exactly.
STEVE: The sad reality is, that faster than Lone can release orangutans, more come into the centre.
Witnessing what's going on here, it's obvious that time is running out.
If nothing is done, orangutans could become extinct in the wild.
But there are glimmers of hope.
Positive steps are being taken, but attitudes take time to change.
We have to make sure this change doesn't happen too late for Borneo's orangutans.
How could we live with the knowledge that we let one of our closest relatives disappear from the planet forever?