June 25, 2009 at 1:51 pm
A world renowned orangutan expert, Dr. Birute Marija Filomena Galdikas, was impressed with the orangutan rehabilitation efforts in Sarawak, especially at the Semenggoh and Matang Wildlife Centres near here.
Dr. Galdikas, a primatologist, conservationist, ethologist and author of several books related to endangered species, is also known as an authority in the field of modern primatology, having studied orangutan for 38 years.
“Orangutan is a difficult species to conserve. Nevertheless, Sarawak had done a very decent job in protecting them,” she said after visiting Sarawak Forestry’s orangutan rehabilitation centres in Matang and Semenggoh.
Dr. Galdikas
She was also impressed with the innovative measures that the state government had implemented in taking good care of the orangutan by involving the private sector as well.
The Canada-born, now holding Indonesian citizenship, passionately monitors about 330 wild-born orangutan in Kalimantan.
Dr. Galdikas is also famous for being the third member of a women trio, known as ‘Leakey’s Angels’, while the other two were Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees and Dian Fossey, infamous for her pursuit to study and protect mountain gorillas.
Meanwhile, Irene Spencer, a certified travel consultant from the United States who accompanied Dr. Galdikas, was equally impressed with the conservation efforts carried out by the Sarawak Forestry.
She was here to look at the potential of promoting orangutan tours for high-end interest groups to Matang and Semenggoh by next year as it was a niche market that has great potential and demands in the US.
During the tour, they were shown the various rehabilitation process of orangutan, the veterinary clinic, feeding station, orangutan enrichment programme and later briefed on orangutan conservation in Sarawak by Sarawak Forestry park warden, Wilfred Landong.
Landong said apart from being home to numerous baby orangutan born in the wild to rehabilitated mothers, Semenggoh is a centre for the study of orangutan biology and behaviour as well as a safe and natural haven for dozens of semi-wild orangutan who are actually graduates of the successful rehabilitation programmes.
Source: Bernama
Nice works and I wish good luck for all the people who joined to this efforts.
I think we have to find all kind of media channel to reach people who could help. Nice example for this kind of indirect approach which I found somewhere on the Apple App Store is a new iPhone game application which could bring the nature and animals of Malaysia closer to children and people and could help to save those habitats. (iArcherfish)