Teaching orangs to survive

Press, 29 September 1979, Page 17

Teaching orangs to survive

Orang Utan: Orphans of the Forest. By Monica Borer with Bernard Stonehouse. W. H. Allen, 1979. 178 pp. $17.75. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger)

Anglia Television in Britain has produced a “Survival” series since 1961. One of these programme was of the same title as this book and was filmed in Sumatra where two young Swiss scientists worked for four years. Their project was to intercept orangs that had become dissociated from their environment either by being kept as pets, orphaned by the slaughter of their mothers, Or by the logging operations that removed their tree homes.

From there they were quarantined by the young women, taught if necessary to make nests, climb trees and peform all their other natural functions which they had lost in the process of lengthy incarceration, and after this rehabilitation period were

released, sometimes on more salubrious areas of the island. The book is written simply without scientific flourishes, but manages to convey satisfyingly the love the two young women developed for the gentle human-like animals, their sorrow when one does not respond to their ministrations, and their joy when the rehabilitation process results in jet another orang swinging away through the trees in freedom, and coming back for occasional tea parties.

As the author admits, the four years of work only affected about 50 orangs, but the philosophy of preservation of wiidlife—the recognition that orangs are neither game nor pets to be kept in castes and stately gardens — ha< become part of normal thinking for a large group of people. The television pictures of orang life have similarly contributed in this way, and the pictures in the book taken from the film are splendid animal studies in the rain forest.