Category: Camp Leakey

Surveying the Land: by foot, by boat, and by air

A large part of OFI’s work to save orangutans from extinction involves protecting the forests of Borneo. Orangutans must have a place to live. Protecting the land is a big task, and it takes many forms. OFI works with the forestry department and police to coordinate patrolling efforts in Tanjung Puting National Park against poachers,… Continue reading Surveying the Land: by foot, by boat, and by air

Spy in the Wild

Frequent visitor to Camp Leakey, Siswi is delighting screen audiences yet again in the documentary tv series Spy in the Wild. (In 2011, Siswi appeared in the IMAX documentary Born to Be Wild.) Spy in the Wild is a British nature mini-series “in which animatronic spy creatures infiltrate the animal world to explore their complex emotions.”… Continue reading Spy in the Wild

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A Look Back at the History of Iconic Camp Leakey

When Birute Mary Galdikas ventured deep into the heart of Borneo in 1971 as a young graduate student, it was in pursuit of a long sought-after dream – that of exploring an ancient tropical rainforest and discovering more about the mystery held within it: the Bornean orangutan. Dr. Galdikas was fascinated by these animals we… Continue reading A Look Back at the History of Iconic Camp Leakey

Orangutan of the Month: Uci

Throwing a huge leaf over her head with a comical flourish, Uci (pronounced ‘oochi’) follows along with the group of adolescent female orangutans making their way across the forest floor. Displaying youthful fearlessness, they tramp through the deep puddles of water formed by last night’s heavy rains. Emerging onto drier ground, Uci loses her leafy… Continue reading Orangutan of the Month: Uci

Visit by Miss Indonesia 2008

Zivanna (Zizi) Letisha Siregar, Miss Indonesia 2008 (for the Miss Universe pageant), recently visited the Orangutan Foundation International’s Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine in Pasir Panjang as well as Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park as part of a well-orchestrated trip to publicize the plight of wild orangutan populations and their habitat, tropical rain forest, in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

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Great Call Girl!

Our adventure in Indonesia started with a trip to Jakarta. We were greeted by an (un)healthy dose of heat, noise, and smog and endured a week of frustrating, but necessary, red-tape, government officials (more often behind ping-pong tables than desks), and hair-raising taxi drives in order to validate our LIPI research permits. Eventually we received… Continue reading Great Call Girl!

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 26907 [post_author] => 10296 [post_date] => 2000-05-01 13:40:26 [post_date_gmt] => 2000-05-01 20:40:26 [post_content] => In 1987, when I first came to Camp Leakey as an Earthwatch volunteer, there were three sub-adult orangutans in camp: Pola, Yayat, and Kusasi. Two years later, I was in a kelotok which was carrying an Earthwatch team to Kumai on the first leg of their trip home. Suddenly, a speedboat pulled up alongside. It had been sent to rush back to camp two members of the team: Ellen Goff and Christae Mielock, both nurses. We were told that Yayat had fought with another sub-adult, and that his belly had been torn open and his intestines were hanging out. Fortunately, that turned out to be not entirely true. Yayat had a gash, about two inches long, on the left side of his abdomen, but the wound had not penetrated the membrane that surrounds the abdominal cavity. What was protruding was a section of that membrane. The nurses could not treat Yayat immediately because he had climbed a tree, retired to a nest, and could not be dislodged. The next morning, Yayat was sedated, the nurses pushed the membrane back into place and, with some difficulty because of his tough skin, sewed the wound shut. He was put into a cage from which he escaped into the forest, not to appear again for several months, apparently in good health. He went on the become one of the "kings" of Camp Leakey, after Pola, who was the first of the three to become an adult. However, when Kusasi became a "cheekpadder", Yayat, who reached adulthood before Kusasi and who had been dominant over him, was no longer a match for him and abdicated in favor of the new king. Yayat still appears in Camp Leakey from time to time, but leaves when Kusasi shows up. [post_title] => Orangutan of the Month: Yayat [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => orangutan-of-the-month-yayat [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-09-27 04:57:26 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-09-27 11:57:26 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://orangutan.org/?p=26907 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )