INDONESIA: Orangutans in Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo have their traditional New Year Tea Party

Record ID: 376764

  • Title: INDONESIA: Orangutans in Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo have their traditional New Year Tea Party
  • Date: 16th January 2001
  • Summary: JAKARTA, INDONESIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) GV ZOO/ORANGUTANS' 'PLAYGROUND' MV CARETAKER ULRIKE VON MENGDEN AMONG ORANGUTANS DURING PARTY SV MENGDEN HOLDING DRINKING CUP FOR ORANGUTAN CLOSEUP OF ORANGUTAN EATING SUGAR ICING OFF A COOKIE SV ORANGUTAN SITTING BEFORE BASKET OF FRUITS CLOSEUP OF ORANGUTAN WITH TINSEL OVER ITS SHOULDER EATING FRUIT SV ORANGUTAN SWINGING MV WOMAN TAK
  • Embargoed: 31st January 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JAKARTA, INDONESIA
  • Country: Indonesia
  • Topics: Environment,Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA9W47WX6FHZFQCQUSHYSN583PZ
  • Story Text: It's party time at Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo, where thirty-eight orangutans have been treated to their annual New Year tea party.
    It was a mouthwatering feast for the orangutans.
    Slices of watermelons and papayas were laid out on a table in their 'playground' and seasonal snakefruits and rambutans, an orangutan favourite, were hung from the bars of their jungle gym.
    Tea and milk were also served as well as other snacks, including roasted peanuts, cookies, hard-boiled eggs and dinner rolls.
    For the orangutans, this is the one time a year they are allowed to enjoy table food instead of their regular diet of bananas.
    The zoo is run by Ulrike von Mengden, a German national who has dedicated more than 30 years of her life to saving orangutans.
    The orangutans living in the zoo range in age from six months to 26 years old.
    Some of them were born there, but most were stolen from the jungles of Borneo and their parents shot, ending up at the zoo after the police seized them from illegal owners or the black market.
    Visitors enjoyed the New Year's party almost as much as the orangutans, and some expressed their admiration for von Mengden.
    "Different people are taking baby orangutans from the wild, she feels that what she can do is in some way put something back to the environment and rehabilitate these babies into the wild," said Carol Hazell, a visitor from Australia.
    "Behind every one of these orangutans that we see now there is the ghost of the dead mother, because the mother has been killed for the purpose of taking the babies and selling them," Hazell added.
    Hazell, like many others, described Mengden as the Jane Goodall or the Diane Fossey of orangutans as she single-handedly runs the zoo with her own money and donations from around the world.
    The young orangutans at the zoo will be rehabilitated and released in to the wild. The adult ones,however, have a much smaller chance off going back to their forest homes because they have grown too strong to be retrained.
    The sanctuary at Ragunan Zoo serves as the first stop, where the orangutans can live up to five years before they are released into the jungle.
    From Jakarta, the endangered apes are sent to another rehabilitation centre in Kalimantan before being released.
    The orangutans' habitat has been damaged by illegal logging and by forest fires in 1997 which destroyed thousands of hectares of their jungle home in Borneo.
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