Sending Temara home

Keeping them as pets is illegal, but the practice is alleged to continue, with a tame orang-utan a status symbol for any Big Man in the military, government or business. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) claims there are more orang-utans per square kilometre in the gardens of Taipei tycoons than in the wild, and that five or six die for every one that makes it in the concrete jungle.

The last wild orang-utan recorded in the 147,000-hectare Bukit Tigapuluh park was in 1830. The animals now present are all rescued pets and their progeny. Cocks said that so called ‘benign conservation’ - meaning just stopping poachers and loggers - will not work and that parks need to be restocked.

Cocks is confident that threats from guns and chain saws are minimal, that villagers who get income from maintaining the park are supportive, and that it’s time to try and release an animal to boost the park’s breeding program.

“Modern Western zoos have moved dramatically from being a menagerie of curiosities to an agency for conservation,” said Perth Zoo’s chief executive officer Susan Hunt.

“We want to improve understanding of the natural world. We’re involved in research - we’re a shop front for conservation programs. This is a pilot project and if successful more releases into the wild may follow - maybe even a Sumatran tiger.”

So Temara will be flown in a crate from Perth to Jakarta and then trucked or airlifted to Jambi for a staged “soft release”. Senior keeper Bullo will stay for three months working with Indonesian rangers to slowly ease the transition from Western Australia to the tropics.

The zoo started breeding orang-utans in 1970. Gestation is around 260 days and getting them to mate is not too difficult. However they have the lowest mammalian reproduction rate - one offspring around every eight years. The big problem is keeping the young alive. Maternal rejection is a serious hazard for creatures born in captivity.

Orang-utans are intelligent and consequently sensitive and prone to stress. They need to be housed and handled with great care, recognising that mental health is as important as physical wellbeing. Most early attempts to keep wild animals in zoos failed.

The Perth Zoo, which got its original animals from a private collection in Malaysia in 1968, seems to have mastered the skills. It claims to have the world’s most successful breeding program with 25 young born in the past 35 years. Seventeen survived infancy.

Part of the secret is in understanding the animal’s psychology and social behaviour. Orang-utans can live into their 50s. They’re territorial and tend to prefer their own company. But they also want to know the whereabouts of their colleagues. So the Perth Zoo has attempted to replicate adult female territories. In each enclosure is a tower for the animals to climb and keep an eye on their neighbours.

Although the AOP only started assisting the Bukit Tigapuluh Park two years ago it will have donated AUD $181,000 (Rp 1.25 billion) by the end of next June. Most of the money has come from concerned individuals, the zoo and the Australian Government.

Perth Zoo CEO Susan Hunt said she was negotiating an agreement with the Indonesian government for the zoo to make a long-term commitment to conservation at Bukit Tigapuluh. She hoped this would be in place next year.