Matang Wildlife Centre: Enrichment & The successful release of a slow loris

...The mosquito net did not work. It fell at around 3 in the morning and smothered me like a spiders web, slightly disconcerting. Will attempt a different tack tonight. Today was our volunteering day at the centre. We were up for breakfast at 8, where, amongst the standard breakfast fare, there were beefy bao buns. Very delicious, although my colleagues were far less convinced. We had to wait until 10 to actually start the enrichment, which seemed like a long time of waiting around, and when it did start there was a bit of chatting and generally not doing anything which was again a bit pointless. But we eventually got started by cutting down large leaves, covering them in honey and jam, stuffing them into a box and adding a selection of nuts and seeds. We threw these into the orangutan enclosures where they were gleefully greeted by excitable apes who ripped apart the boxes (which were used as raincoats, unsuccessfully due to cardboards propensity to absorb water and flake away), licked the leaves and gobbled up the seeds and nuts. Great to see them so animated. 

After this was another excessively long wait and another excellent lunch. Our intention was to do a hike but the weather wasn’t good enough apparently (it was probably the best the weather had been the whole time we’ve been here...) so we gathered a shedload more leaves from a tree that had just been cut down to give to the orangutans and macaques for enrichment. You basically poke a leafy branch towards them and they’ll grab it and start making a nest in their cages. These orangutans are in the quarantine cages as they don’t have enough space at the Matang Wildlife centre to accommodate all of them in safe, outdoor spaces. The stories of some of the apes are tragic. One of them is a famous smoking orang from a circus (YouTube smoking orangutan and you’ll probably see her). Only one of 8 of these will have a chance to be released as all the others have been dependent on humans for far too long. After playing with the orangutans and the branches for long enough we moved over to the other monkeys and gibbons. These chaps had a lot of energy and were in various states of comfort with humans. One wouldn’t come anywhere near us and kept up a terrified call for the duration we were near, others grabbed the sticks out of our hands with angry relish, others were fairly gentle. In this area was also a terrified sun bear called Suzy who had grown up with a chain around her neck which was so tight she had to be surgically removed from it. She was clearly distressed by the number of people walking around. So sad that people have done this to such a beautiful creature. 

Being very moved by this we headed back to the house at 4 for more ‘free time’ before dinner at 6:30. To be honest I would have much rather spent this extra time doing things to help out the centre rather than sitting around. With itchy feet Melanie, Sonya and I went on a short hike to a waterfall and back. Dinner was again great and this evening we were due to do the night hike we missed out on yesterday. We had the added excitement of releasing two slow loris’ who had been dropped off at the centre that day. They need to do this at night as slow loris are nocturnal. One of them we delighted to be free, however the other was hugely stressed and fought tooth and nail to stay in the cage. Once Dom had managed to extract her without getting bitten (they’re very poisonous) it was clear that she just didn’t know how to climb and had been a pet for far too long, or she was just so massively stressed that she couldn’t. She ended up falling off the tree and hiding in the crook of a root where Dom again had a massive fight with her to put her back in the cage. They’ll try again another evening, maybe after some jungle training too. On the subsequent night walk we saw loads of animals, the most impressive being a flying lemur (much like a flying squirrel). We had a couple of beers then headed to bed. Actually a really good day, although there was a lot of spare time we could have spend doing something useful.