It's is over 18 months since the Appeal refurbished the night nursery and provided a new quarantine ward for the Centre and it was time for us to sit down and decide what else was needed to improve the orphans chance of survival and eventual return to the wild. The question was answered very quickly – a sick bay!
Misouri arrived at Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre in 1997 aged approx 14 or 15 years old. He was a wild born male who had wondered onto a local plantation and was at risk of being shot for crop raiding. In /Sabah the law allows land owners and farmers to protect their property, even if that means shooting an endangered species of animal to do so.
On 19th April 2004 Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre was presented with a purpose built Land Rover Defender 130 crew cab by the Sepilok Orangutan Appeal UK and Land Rover, in a joint sponsorship deal. The Centres old 4 wheel drive Mazda, which was used by the Rescue and Relocation Team, became unrepairable several months ago. The Centre had no budget available with which to purchase a new vehicle to enable them to continue this very essential work and therefore the Appeal offered to do its very best to secure one for them.
As we travelled out to Sabah in April, I didn’t realise that we were about to make history again! Our latest project was to relocate an orangutan who had been raiding a nearby village, risking being shot, and was currently being held at Sepilok. Tom King, was about 28 years old, a full cheek padded, wild born male. Not a happy one at that, as he wanted out!
In March 2003 word was received from Sepilok’s Chief Vet saying they had found a suitable candidate for the vacancy of Carer for the very young orphans in the Nursery but the Wildlife Department were unable to provide the funding.
On August 15th 2002 a team of five appeal members, Sue Sheward, Anne Seviour (Secretary), Lynda and Malcolm Averill (Northern Branch) and Avril Nelson arrived in Sabah, ready to carry out our next Project – the release of two female orangutans into Tabin Reserve. Tabin is a reserve twice the size of Singapore and where we released King in July 2001. This release was going to be a little bit special as the BBC were filming the whole event for inclusion in their new series Serious Jungle.
The team left for Sepilok on 8th March with two tasks at hand, firstly the commissioning of the stainless steel caging for the nursery and secondly the maintenance of the exercise enclosure which we built exactly one year ago. Arriving at Sepilok was like “coming home”, everyone was so pleased to see us and it only took a glance at the enclosure to realise the maintenance was not happening one day too early. The corrosive weather conditions in Sabah make it essential for equipment to be regularly protected and with such limited resources Sepilok find this an impossible task. Armed with scrappers, paint and brushes our team set about work to remove the old paint, renew the protection coat and apply the final finish, a task that took the team 5 days.
The Rehabilitation Centre was buzzing with excitement the day we arrived in Sabah, for it meant King Ghaz, a male orangutan in his prime, would at last be returned to the wild. For a number of months, King had been confined to a holding cage after he began to display territorial aggression in the area of the reserve surrounding the centre.
Our project was to construct a large exercise enclosure for the young orphan Orangutans. The existing pen was totally inadequate, too small and cramped. The task was a timely one as in the last two months the old cage had become unusable. It had rusted and frayed and the orphans had to spend long periods of time in small indoor cages, where exercise and climbing practice was impossible.
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