Help to Monitor and Protect Orangutans in Borneo

A huge thank you to everyone who has given so generously! We honestly couldn’t do this without you and every penny given is helping us monitor and protect orangutans and the other amazing wildlife species in the Bukit Batikap Protection Forest.

The past few months have been a busy time with the BOS Foundation team focusing on post-release monitoring of the orangutans whilst preparing for our next phase of camera trapping! Thanks to your fabulous support the new Reconyx cameras we have bought arrived in Indonesia and all broken cameras were returned to the USA for repair or replacement. Insect damage had impacted quite a few cameras, which is unsurprising in a tropical rainforest and also given the fact that this equipment has been in the field for three years! But after several months of planning, we are now ready to deploy the new and repaired cameras with our revised study design. The data we have gathered over the past years has provided us with the first systematic study of all medium-large sized mammal species, including orangutans, in Batikap and this baseline information is fundamental to monitor and predict changes in the mammal community over time. Our new study will deploy cameras in “high traffic” orangutan areas. These are areas where the post-release monitoring team regularly encounters orangutans - such as river crossing hotspots and popular feeding trees, so as to record as many orangutan images as possible. Two to three cameras will be positioned at each camera trap station to maximise the chances of obtaining clear images from different angles, which will aid the team in identifying individual orangutans. As you can see from some of the example images below, it's really challenging to try to identify individuals from pictures of an eye or nose (and sometimes even just a cheek-pad or armpit!). This new data will help us improve our chances of identification of individual orangutans and monitor their long-term success.

The team is ready to start fieldwork in July and we are thrilled to be embarking on this next phase of fieldwork. In the meantime, we are continuing to analyse data from the last three years and will report back on our findings. For now, we are excited to share some of the highlights from our camera trapping project and we look forward to bringing you new images and updates from the field! Stay tuned and thank you all again for following our progress and updates!

Happy New Year everyone and thank you all once again for your wonderfully generous donations to this exciting project which is allowing us to help monitor the Bornean orangutansreintroduced into the Bukit Batikap Protection Forest, and of course all of the other wonderful wildlife species which inhabit this pristine rainforest. This project has been truly wonderful in providing us with long-term data on the mammal community in Batikap so they can be protected long into the future.

Whilst we are working on getting new cameras out to the field (and stay tuned for more information soon), we have been delighted to start processing some of the new images collected by the BOS Foundation Post Release Monitoring (PRM) team, and we have some treats for you!

We recently captured an image of an unknown female orangutan with her young offspring. As you can see this mother is getting a little wet and you can just make out her young child hanging on to her side (and even treading on her feet), we assume to shelter from the rain. We’ll work with the BOS Foundation expert babysitters, technicians and veterinarians and see if we can work out who it is. But it’s great to see this mother and baby thriving following a downpour in Batikap!

Another image of an extremely rare gem was recorded in August 2022. Although we have documented the presence of several rare and elusive felids, and this is not the first image we have of this species, we were delighted to see this beautiful, healthy marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) appear on camera. Relatively little is known about this species, though they are threatened by habitat loss and hunting and listed at Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. We hope to gather more data on this species in the future to help contribute to current state of knowledge and conservation plans for their long-term protection.

Lots of mammals have been showing up on the cameras and we couldn’t resist posting this beautiful image of a sun bear!

Stay tuned for more updates and news and thank you again to everyone for your unwavering support. We wish you all a very happy and healthy 2023!

All through 2022, the wonderful BOS Foundation Post Release Monitoring (PRM) team in the Bukit Batikap Protection Forest has continued their tireless efforts to monitor the reintroduced orangutans and collect data from the camera traps, which has been amazing. Although some of the cameras are now in need of repair or replacement, thanks to your incredible support we are busy behind the scenes making this happen.

In the meantime, we have been processing the images received and have some new photos to share! One of the highlights is definitely these rare image captures of white-fronted langurs (Presbytis frontana). It is unusual to observe this species on the ground and we were delighted to see two very clear images of these langurs – one of them which was feeding. These beautiful primates are endemic to the island of Borneo and categorized in the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable since their population is believed to have declined by 30% in the last 30 years. It is wonderful to see them surviving and we hope thriving in Batikap.

Many other species continue to be recorded on the cameras – especially pig-tailed macaques, who always seem to take great pleasure in hanging out in front of the cameras either feeding, grooming or resting. We especially loved this little macaque who was obviously intrigued with the camera and stopped for a pose.

In the next few months, we’ll be posting more news and the amazing images that we have captured and also bringing you an update on the new cameras we will be deploying.  A huge thank you to everyone who has supported! Your donations have meant that we have been able to run this project for over two years and can now increase our efforts further to investigate both the reintroduced orangutans and all of the other mammal species in Batikap – thank you!

Thanks to your wonderful support, the BOS Foundation Post Release Monitoring (PRM) team in the Bukit Batikap Protection Forest continues to monitor orangutans and collect data from the camera traps, and it is always exciting to see the results.

Recently the orangutans didn’t disappoint and we are delighted to share these images of female orangutan Gina as she decided to “investigate” one of the cameras. Wild animal interference with remote cameras is an issue that all researchers’ using camera traps experience. Some species are renowned for their enthusiastic interest in cameras and in some countries that is often bears. In our case, many different species take an interest in the cameras and sometimes try to move them.

Reintroduced orangutans also sometimes take a keen interest and this is because they have been rehabilitated by human caregivers and have less fear of new objects compared to wild orangutans. We anticipated this and each camera is housed in a strong steel security box and secured with a python cable. We have also tried different ways of camouflaging the cameras, which is harder than it sounds because camouflage materials can get in the way of the camera lens and this can cause the camera to continually misfire and take images of whatever is in its way.

Gina, who was released into Batikap in April 2016, spotted one of the cameras and made her way purposely towards it. The camera documented over 20 minutes of her time spent systematically “investigating” it. Fortunately, she couldn’t open the security box to access the back of the camera and we were able to retrieve the SD memory card and watch the entire sequence of her antics. Another of the cameras was also an apparently interesting item to investigate and the unidentified orangutan in this case had actually peeled away the bottom of the steel security box the camera was secured in - that is how strong these orangutans are!

Nonetheless, and despite these occasional hiccups, the cameras can be fixed or replaced thanks to your wonderful support and they can continue to provide us with these incredible insights and images of the orangutans and so many other species.

We’ll continue to report back with our new findings and in the meantime, we hope you enjoy these photo’s of Gina and some of the other forest dwellers who are intrigued with the cameras!

Thanks to your amazing support, we are getting closer to our goal! Thank you to you all and we are excited to share an update with you on our project in the Bukit Batikap Protection Forest!

The BOS Foundation Post Release Monitoring (PRM) team have been busy collecting data from the cameras.

One of our highlights has to be these images of relatively new mother, Manggo, together with her baby Melki! Manggo was released on Valentine’s Day in 2013 as a 7ish year-old, together with her mother Markisa and baby brother Uli. After her release, Manggo quickly gained her independence and 8 years later we are delighted to see her with her own baby. Both are very healthy and undoubtedly Manggo is a great Mum to curious little Melki. In case you were wondering the name Melki comes from our former PRM Coordinator at Batikap who was instrumental in helping to set up our camera trap project. Thank you Melki and it looks like Manggo and your namesake dropped by one of the cameras to say thank you too!

We have a few more orangutans on camera that we are still trying to identify and we are pretty sure that one or two of them might be orangutans we released with their mothers when they were still young and they are now entering their teenage years. Orangutans’ faces can change quite significantly as they grow up and we are checking back with the babysitters and veterinarians at Nyaru Menteng to see if they can help us identify these individuals.

So many other species have been passing by the cameras and we are busy labeling all of the 223,000 images we have gathered so far. For now we wanted to share a few of those, like these two muntjacs’ who spent ages standing in front of this particular camera grooming each other with gentle licks (kisses). We also captured this image of a clouded leopard and a stunning image of an adult red langur.

As we continue to process all the data, we’ll report back with our latest findings and exciting new images.

Thank you for supporting the protection of our reintroduced orangutans. We couldn’t do it without you!