Wanicare Foundation

As everyone could have read in the updates of our website about Noni and Dodo, we where still so far not able to move them to a permanent place or to a rehabilitation center. Happily we have good news for Noni and Dodo! We still can not translocate them, but we have received funding from Orang-utan Outreach to prepare a new cage for them. They defiantly grow out of their cage in which they are sitting in now. Of course we also never thought they would be in PPSC for such a long time! With the funding that we got from Orang-utan Outreach we started now with the preparing of two big carnivore cages that are not in use right now. We hope that we will be finished with the preparations of this cage very soon so that we can move them there. We hope to move Noni and Dodo to Yogyakarta where they are starting a new orang-utan center at the moment.

To be continued… 

 PPSC is involved in a new project. SERO (Supportive Environments for the Region’s Otters) is the name of the project. Sero is Sundanese for otter, Sundanese is the local language the locals speak here in Cikananga.

 SERO is a partnership between PPSC (Cikananga Wild Life Center), JAAN (Jakarta Animal Aid Network), IOSF) International Otter Survival Fund and member of IUCN’s otter Specialist Group (OSG)

 Our priority is to provide a save rehabilitation space for otters with the aim of reintroduction to the wild. Other priorities are; improved husbandry of captive otters, an education program to raise public awareness about otters and their environments, moves towards protected status for the Asian short clawed otter and sustainable/ protected environments for wild populations.

 PPSC has been identified as the ideal place to begin the rehabilitation process.

Very little professional work, perhaps none, has been done on the rehabilitation and release of Asian shortclaw otters. PPSC has three shortclaw otters in the centre at the moment; Merci, Lenci and Nessie.

 Humane Society International (Australia) have fully funded the creation of a rehabilitation pen for the otters at PPSC. We started with the preparing work on the new otter pen. As soon as this area is “otter proof” we will move our otters in and start the rehabilitation process with the aim of releasing them back into the wild. Of course we hope that we can rehabilitate many otters in the future and release them back into their natural habitat.

October 3^rd 2010 Wanicare and PPSC followed a campaign that was organized by the organization JAAN. Other NGOs who were involved where COP, Animal Friend Jogja, UKF-IPB, JIS and UNJ .

The main focus of this campaign was about attempts to close the wildlife trade. Especially the wildlife trade concerning the bird markets in Jakarta. Behind the scenes of the markets, there is a lot of illegal wild animal trade.
Can the government provide a solution? Is there any chance that local governments might consider ignoring some of the rules and laws regarding protected species? Because most animal markets, trade protected native wildlife to Indonesia. To make people and the government aware of these problems we held this campaign.

The campaign was held at Monas Monument in Jakarta where we distributed leaflets and stickers with images of Indonesian wildlife. We gave information about why the bird market (wildlife trade market) should not exist. We also collected autographs from everybody who also wants to close down the bird market and who are against wildlife trade. We collected a lot of autographs!
We ended with a protest marche, from the Monas Monument to the HI (Hotel Indonesia) roundabout.

The whole campaign was a big success; many people came to the campaign and some even followed us in the protest marche.

We hope that the Government will pay attention to campaigns such as this, so that they will help protect Indonesia’s wildlife.

On Sunday September 5^th we had already our 3^rd benefit concert. Brigitte van Hagen and Jan van Wijk gave again a great performance after Willemijn gave a small presentation about the work of Wanicare. Many people came to the concert and it was again a great success. We are planning to make the benefit concert bigger, with more musicians, a greater variety of performances and maybe at another location so that more people can come.

Wanicare wants to thank everybody who gave a donation and hope to see you next year again at our benefit concert.

Last November PPSC rescued Dompoe and Jolie from their previous owner who had illegally taken them from the wild, and kept them in poor conditions. Happily here at PPSC we have been caring for them for the past 6 months and they have made a full recovery. However for any of the species we have here it is ideal to eventually relocate them to a specialised rehabilitation centre. On the 7^th July we took them to the Javan Gibbon Centre in Bogor. In this centre they will be rehabilitated, socialised with other gibbons, paired with mates and taught the vital skills for living in the wild. We are very happy for them that they now have a good future ahead of them.