Lomon, the Jungle man

Just like Lynchee, orangutan Lomon had a tougher early life than most of us can imagine. Taken from the Borneo forest as a baby, his mother was killed by plantation workers who ate her – keeping Lomon as a pet at the camp. He was eventually sold off and lived chained to the wall of a wooden crate for several years.

Thankfully, local workers had learned from Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) that it was wrong to keep animals like orangutans, and reported the owner. Forest Police and BOS bought Lomon to the Nyaru Menteng Rescue Project.

Says Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK,

“When Lomon arrived at Nyaru Menteng, he weighed just 6kg. He was like a sack of bones,” Though his teeth told them Lomon was six years old, he should have weighed almost four times as much.

Late on the third day, it seemed Lomon was dying. “He lay quivering in a foetal position. The staff tried to offer him every kind of food and drink they could think of, but he refused it.” Then, a new delivery of sweet pineapples proved a turning point.

“I fetched one of them and brought it to the listless Lomon. His eyes lit up, he sat up and snatched the pineapple from me, and tore into it with his teeth. He devoured the pineapple in no time, stood up and in our office, helped himself to a bag of noodles.”

“Since then, Lomon has not stopped eating.”

In a few months, the male ape had reached a respectable 30kg, five times heavier than when he arrived. Now, Desilets says each afternoon a “smorgasbord of fruit” arrives for him.

“Lomon perches himself on top of this pile of fruit and stuffs himself silly. All the other orangutans seem to tolerate his indulgent behaviour. As if they know that after all he has been through, he deserves no less.

“One day, when Lomon has learnt most of the lessons he needs to know, he will be released back into the forest,” she says.

Unprecedented in scale

Fortunately Lomon’s is not an isolated success story. The Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation has been rescuing orangutans for over 15 years, with its aim to protect both the species and the rainforest ecosystem in which it lives.

The largest primate rescue project in the world, BOS has rescued over 1000 orangutans. It also protects the Mawas Reserve, a million-acre portion of forest with over 3000 resident orangutans, in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian (Southern) Borneo.

The Samboja Lestari Project has seen over 2,000 hectares of alang-alang wasteland reforested by BOS, who have planted 1,800 species of native trees.

“We’ve seen an approximate 30 percent increase in rainfall. Now Samboja Lestari has become a watershed, capable of supplying the city of Balikpapan with much needed fresh water.”

Holidays as workers

To spread the conservation message, the project also offers eco-volunteer holidays, offering a first-hand perspective of the issues threatening the orangutan and its forest habitat.

“I believe there’s no other place in the world where tourists can take part in such a large-scale reforestation effort. Our team, with the help of volunteers, can plant as many as 1,000 trees in a day.”

Tourists work with local staff, preparing food for both the rescued orangutans who live on islands within the project, and for the sun bears, part of the largest sun bear rescue project in the world.

Amidst the hard work there is pay back. The lodge setting is idyllic, built high on a hillside overlooking the orangutan islands and far-reaching forest.

“Visitors wake up to the melodic sound of gibbon song and the chatter of the dozens of resident bird species.”

Desilets is also clear about the benefits of a a conservation-driven holiday versus a typical vacation.

“They experience what the work in the tropics is like. Not an artificial surrounding adjusted to their needs or expectations. You actually know and see to what you have contributed, towards a better future of our planet.

And you really experience the smells, the sounds, the life in a conservation project – in a place that almost no one else has been to, enough to make your friends envious.”

“But you also have something real to share after you come back to your own world.”

How you can help

• To help orangutans visit www.savetheorangutan.org.uk, or the Bahasa website, www.orangutan.or.id. Or find out more about the eco-volunteer holiday at http://sambojalodge.orangutan.or.id/.

• Learn more about elephant rescue and The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation at http://www.helpingelephants.org – or luxury with conservation at http://www.fourseasons.com/goldentriangle/.

First published in SilkWinds