EARTH DAY 2024: PLANET VS PLASTICS
Every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day to honour the planet that is home to us all.
Back in 2013, a female orangutan named Cici missed her chance at true freedom when her release was postponed. Cici is now 24 years old and a resident of Kaja Island, where she has lived since 26 November 2018.
Cici was initially handed over to the Samboja Lestari Rehabilitation Centre by the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) of DKI Jakarta on 8 January 2003. She underwent the usual rehabilitation process, which included time spent in both Forest School and on a pre-release island. Cici was almost set to be released into the Kehje Sewen Forest, East Kalimantan, with 12 other orangutans in October 2013. However, health investigations, including DNA tests, revealed that Cici belonged to the Central Kalimantan subspecies of orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) rather than the East Kalimantan subspecies (Pongo pygmaeus morio).
Read also: 9TH ORANGUTAN RELEASE D-1: START IN EAST KALIMANTAN!
Due to this revelation, the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation team decided to postpone Cici's journey to freedom. This decision was not made lightly, considering Cici's readiness to survive in the wild. Cici, alongside orangutans, Karen, Roma, Donna, and Marwoto, was relocated to the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Centre on 28 November 2013, in a move to ensure they all could live in their natural habitat.
Read also: DAY 1 FIVE ORANGUTANS RETURN TO CENTRAL KALIMANTAN
Cici (Photo credit: BOSF 2023)
Cici (Photo credit: BOSF 2023)
This is not the first time this has occurred at the BOS Foundation: cross-provincial orangutan releases have been carried out multiple times in the past. However, the release candidates at that time were orangutans from Central Kalimantan who were ultimately released in East Kalimantan: Yayang, Sayang, and Diah. Cici's story is a similar case but with the opposite background to these three orangutans.
Read also: CROSS-PROVINCE ORANGUTAN RELEASE CANDIDATES
Cici, and seven other orangutans, are now finally ready to be released back to the protected Bukit Batikap Forest, after a 10-year rehabilitation process at the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Centre. Enjoy your freedom, Cici. We hope this delay to your homecoming makes the moment just that much sweeter!
Every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day to honour the planet that is home to us all.
It was a usual day at the Nyaru Menteng forest school, where young orangutans were learning from one another while their human surrogate mothers looked on from below.
Our Post-Release Monitoring (PRM) team at Camp Himba Pambelum in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park (TNBBBR), Central Kalimantan, encountered Suci, a young female orangutan, three times back in 2023.
