Wani Care Foundation

At 25^th of April we received a phone call from the foresters of National park Gede-Pangrango, near at Sukabumi. About a baby Ebony leaf monkey (Trachypithecus auratus) that they rescued. This after the mother with baby was separated from their group, because they were disturbed by a Long-tail macaque. The mother run away and was very stressed of the whole situation. She grabbed a wrong branch while she was getting away from the macaques and the branch cracked. She felt on the ground together with her baby. That day there where many people visiting the National park, so when she felt on the ground se was so shocked by all the people that she run immediately away and left the baby behind. The people who saw it happen contacted the foresters of the National Park. They picked up the baby and brought it to their office where they gave it milk and contacted us with the question to help to find a solution for the baby. Around 3 pm we arrived at the National Park Gede-Pangrango where we first checked the baby, happily there was nothing wrong with the baby. We discussed what to do with the baby. Our idea was to try to find the mother again so we could hopefully reunite the baby with the mother. If this was not possible we would take the baby to Cikananga and try it the next morning again.
So at 4 PM we went in to the national park with the baby to find the group of leaf monkeys. The foresters knew that end of the day they would always go to one spot so first we went to there to try to find them. We had to wait for a while but after 45 min they came. Now the difficult part came, because who was the mother? We put the baby in a small tree and took a little distends to see which monkey would be very interested in the baby. But we kept close enough to take action when something went wrong.

First all the leaf monkeys came to take a look from a distance at the baby. But after a will more and more of them loose their interest and left. One of them was from the beginning around the baby but didn’t dare to come close. After an hour waiting se still didn’t went near the baby, but was still around the baby. So we decided to put the baby in a higher tree little bit more in to the forest. After we did this in les then 5 minutes the leaf monkey took the baby with her. We are as good as sure that this was the mother of the baby, from the second we put the baby in the tree se was interested in the baby and was the whole time around it. Happily we were able to reunite mother and baby. A story with a good end.

Unfortunately there are still many macaques being held as pet animals here in Indonesia. Also in the near aria of Cikananga! Macaques aren’t protected animals and it is legal to have them as pets. In the most cases they are held in the most terrible way. For example in a small cage without shelter in the full sun, or at a chain! Of course we want to help these pore animals but because it’s legal to have them it makes it for us very difficult to confiscate them. If the owner don’t want to handover the macaque we can’t do much more than negotiate and try to convince the owner that it is really bad for the macaques wellbeing to have them in captivity and tell them that we can give the monkey a good live again with hopefully being released back in nature again.

After receiving information about a few macaques that been hold as pets in Nyalindung (near Cikananga) we went Monday 18^th of April to two owners that having a macaque. Happily the first owner was very helpful and handed over Long-tail macaque (Macaca fascicularis) Engkis to us.

Engkis is now in our quarantine. We did already the first TBC test, collected blood to test her on diseases, de-worming and physical examination. She looks in the first place healthy and her body condition is good. After the second TBC test (in two weeks) and if the results of the lab are negative we will move here to our socialization cage where also pig-tail macaque Nonong sits. Soon we will receive two more long-tail macaques from JAAN so in the future we can make hopefully a group of them.

The second owner who had a pig-tail macaque (Macaca nemestrina)was not so very helpful and after long negotiating he still didn’t want to handing over the macaque! Today (21 of April) Budi (manager at PPSC) went back to this men to negotiate one more time. But the macaque was gone!!! The owner came with a long story that the macaque was not from him and that he took care of the monkey for somebody ells… and so on!! It’s so sad that we cannot help this macaque and give her a better life.

We know there are more macaques in this area and we trying on the moment to negotiate with the owners to handing the animals over to us, hope we will receive all of them here in Cikananga.

Last Saturday (April 2) we made the very difficult decision to put Gede in to sleep (euthanize)! It was a really hard decision to make for us but the best for Gede. His pressure wounds where getting worse and a few days after we amputate his tail the same symptoms started on his paralyzed feet! We talked a lot about if he would ever be able to clime again and till now his recovering progress went only worse instead of better! So we decided that we didn’t want to let him suffer any longer. We all were very sad about it, he was such a sweetheart and we were hoping so much that he would clime one day again.
Why he was paralyzed at his leg and tail we still don’t know! Maybe there was a blood clot somewhere in his pelvic area or had he somewhere a damaged nerve? We will never know!