Great Apes Conservation Fund

The purpose of this program is to identify suitable, safe release sites for rehabilitated animals where they can contribute to development of the wild orangutan population.

This will be done by: 1) carrying out meetings and workshops with stakeholders on project planning; 2) carrying out education and outreach activities in schools and gathering places of local people; 2) exploring and promoting alternative livelihoods through socio-economic surveys to identify activities that exploit natural resources of the potential release sites; 3) identifying long term sustainable financing strategies that comply with IUCN and national laws; 3) holding meetings and workshops with government stakeholders to win their political and institutional support; 4) establishing a working plan with the BKSDA for project activities; 5) establishing a permanent reintroduction site; 6) building a habituation enclosure and other necessary infrastructure for the site; 7) collecting socio-ecological and behavioral data on the wild population of orangutans in the release area; 8) providing pre-release training to the re-introduction candidate orangutans; 9) assessing the suitability of the candidate orangutans by determining their behavioral condition; 10) establishing criteria for selection of the orangutans to be reintroduced to the wild; 11) developing and implementing a disease risk assessment and health risk analyses to identify all potential diseases that might face the released orangutans and establishing proper preventive medical treatment and pre-release screening protocols that aim to minimize the risk of transmission of diseases to wild populations; 12) carrying out a genetic assessment on each orangutan being considered for release; 13) selecting at least 3 rehabilitated orangutans from the IAR center for release as a pilot; 14) implanting each orangutan to be released with a VHF transponder; and 15) monitoring the movements of the released orangutans through radio tracking.