'Alba', the only albino orangutan ever recorded in the world, was rescued by environmentalists from a cage where she was being kept as a pet by villagers (AFP Photo/Handout) |
Jakarta (AFP) - The world’s only known albino orangutan has been released back into the jungle more than a year after she was found emaciated and bloody in a remote corner of Borneo, an Indonesian NGO said Friday.
Environmentalists
rescued "Alba" from a cage where she was being kept as a pet by
villagers in Central Kalimantan in April last year.
She was
found with dry blood smeared around her nose -- the result of her violent
capture -- and weighed just 8 kilogrammes, the Borneo Orangutan Survival
Foundation (BOSF) said.
The
blue-eyed primate, covered in fuzzy white hair, was on Wednesday returned to
the wild with her best friend, Kika, after leaving their rehabilitation centre.
The
blue-eyed primate, covered in fuzzy white hair, returned to the wild with her best
friend, Kika, after more than a year in a rehabilitation centre (AFP
Photo/Handout)
|
"So
far she's showing good signs of adapting," Nico Hermanu, a BOSF spokesman,
told AFP.
"She's
been climbing trees as high as 35 metres (about 115 feet) and has been eating
fruit from the forest."
Kika and
Alba -- who is six years old and now 28 kilos -- will be monitored by
conservation teams at Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park.
The rescue
is a rare spot of bright news for the critically endangered species, which has
seen its habitat shrink drastically over the past few decades largely due to
the destruction of forests for logging, paper, palm oil and mining.
The population of orangutans in Borneo has plummeted from about 288,500 in 1973 to about 100,000 today, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The population of orangutans in Borneo has plummeted from about 288,500 in 1973 to about 100,000 today, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
A string of
fatal attacks on the great apes this year have been blamed on farmers and
hunters.
Four
Indonesian men were arrested over the killing of an orangutan shot some 130
times with an air rifle in February.
Borneo police
have also arrested two rubber plantation workers and accused them of shooting
an orangutan multiple times before decapitating it.
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