Update from the field: Silvery Gibbon Project Lenkong 

The Silvery gibbons that were forced to forage outside the safety of their forest in Lengkong, reported on the 1st of November, are receiving extra food in their forest for three weeks now. Last week the gibbons did not visit the village on daily basis, which is an important step in the good direction. The family group are now reported most often near the tree in which the food is given and they eat all food provided. Many thanks for the donations, your support so far makes it possible to provide extra food for another four weeks. But we are also very thankful for the local support, without the help of the local villagers the future of these gibbons would have been totally different.

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Two days ago this female Javan leopard arrived in Cikananga Wildlife Center. She was brought by the police who also confiscated her. The story of the persons who kept this poor girl is that they where hunting for pigs and suddenly saw 2 leopards fighting, one leopard run in to the rice field and got stuck in the mud, and that’s why they captured her. They kept her in a very small cage, where she could not even turn. The hunters told the police that they had her only for 2 days… Yeah sure!

What really happened will not be clear, but according to her condition it wasn’t much good. From the lack of muscles it’s for sure that she was held in captivity much longer.
Yesterday evening when she arrived, she was in real critical condition and was almost not reacting anymore. She was weak and badly dehydrated, She is also very skinny and her body is covered with small wounds.

At arrival medical treatment was started immediately and she got an infusion against the dehydration.Happily she amazed us and made it trough the first two nights, and she is already eating. It seems she is going to be better and hopefully we can move out of the clinic very soon.

Due to lack of release area’s we are having a hard time housing all the Leopards in Cikananga in a proper way. Would you like to help us build decent accommodations? Please contact us if you do so: info@wanicare.com

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Yesterday we received 4 birds of paradise, a sunbear, 2 gibbons and a clouded leopard that were confiscated from an illegal trader. We really need support to create a (hopefully temporary) home for these young and very vulnerable wild animals, would you like to help us?

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The Javan gibbon groups in Lengkong Regency that are facing local extinction caused by isolation, disturbance, habitat loss and degradation are struggling to find food in this long dry season. Al year round these gibbons are already forced to complete their diet foraging outside the safety of their forests, but two family groups have been going into local villages more frequently in the last weeks. The gibbons’ search for food bring them every day a bit closer to people and the risks that come along. Food items reported being taken by the local gibbons are papaya, soursop, bananas and passion fruits.

On Saturday 31 October the report came in of a gibbon sitting on a chickenpen next to a house. Initially the people were scared, but after being informed that this gibbon was just really hungry, villagers put a mango near the gibbon which was taken shortly after.

Because the reports are getting more concerning by the day Wanicare Foundation will now officially start with providing extra food for these two family groups to lower the risks of conflicts and poaching.

Help these gibbons survive the drought by funding some much needed food! With a donation of only €1,50 you give us the opportunity to give one gibbon food for another day.

This week we moved 5 hornbills from the small quarantine enclosures to one large enclosure where they can finally fly. The young birds were rescued in February from illegal trade. Although this is a step forward, we are still short on funding for appropriate housing considering this larger enclosure is in bad shape. Also other Hornbills are still in small enclosures with limited space. Therefor we want to realise one appropriate hornbill enclosure. Would you like to help these magnificent birds? Please contact us if you want to help us: info@wanicare.com 

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6 eagles where confiscated from a trader in Bogor by the organisation JAAN. Also an Asian short clawed otter and a porcupine where confiscated from the same trader. All animals are still pretty young! This morning they arrived in Cikananga. Before entering the quarantine they all received a medical exam.The more adult eagles are all a bit to skinny and dehydrated but for the rest in OK condition.The 2 young eagle chicks needed extra care in our animal clinic, one is in worrying condition! Happily the otter and porcupine are doing much better and are in good condition and seem to be healthy. The eagles are 1 Javan hawk eagle, 2 changeable hawk eagles light morph and 3 changeable hawk eagles dark morph,including 2 young juveniles.

Great news for Dodo and Noni! We are constructing a new enclosure, which will be much bigger!

Many thanks to JAAN for raising funding to realise this.

We will keep you updated…..

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The 8th of September it was a big day for Dennis, he started his long journey from Cikananga Wildlife Center to Sumatra, to the SOCP orangutan rehabilitation Center on the 8th of September. First by car to Jakarta airport together with our vet Alia, who took care of Dennis since he arrived in Cikananga. In Jakarta the JAAN team was standing ready to help us with all the paper work at the cargo and airport quarantine.
Dennis arrived safely in the SOCP center and will undergo now first 3 months of quarantine time. After this he will be placed in the baby group where he can play whole day long with other orang-utan babies and practise climbing and everything else he needs to learn before he can return back to the wild.
Bye bye Dennis! We will miss you, but we are so happy that you return home and that you soon will play with other orang-utans and that you will return to your natural habitat in the future!
Thanks JAAN and SOCP for all your great support to Dennis and your great help to make this possible for him! Next to that also a huge thanks to Sriwijaya air & Thomas the pilot for the support to bring baby Dennis home safely to the Sumatran forests.

Olif is a young ( 3 year old) Agile gibbon (Hylobates agilis) and was handed over to us by her owner on the 5th of September 2015.

At the age of 8 months old Olif was ‘’adopted’’ by her previous owner. They got her from a friend of a friend. They felt bad from Olif because this friend of a friend wasn’t taking good care of Olif, therefore they decided to take over the care for this baby gibbon.
Olif was and still is much too young to be without her mother! Normally gibbons stay with their parent till they reach the age of 6-7 years old. It’s so sad, again an animal that has to grow up without mother-parent care! Happily the owner of Olif decided to hand her over to us. Unfortunately she isn’t in the best condition! She is much too skinny due malnutrition, especially a lack of protein and calcium! Hopefully with her new diet that she receives now and a bigger enclosure to play and swing around in she will soon become stronger and gets on weight.
She is housed now in our quarantine building and yesterday she got her first TBC test, general medical check-up, de-worming and we took blood to test her on diseases. Olif has to stay at least for 3 months in the quarantine and we have to test 2 more time for TBC, but after that she will move to one of our primate rehabilitation enclosures.
We hope for the future that we can translocate Olif to Kalaweit in Sumatra were she hopefully can return to the wild again.

On the 3rd of September Lia and Bill k where translocated to a release side of Little Fireface Project (LFP). Here they were immediately released in the pre-release cage. The first night it didn’t go really well, Billy K was weak when she arrived but surprisingly started gouging on the branches of the tree’s immediately (to find gum to eat). However she also spent a lot of time sitting on the ground which we never see wild lorries do and could make her very vulnerable to predation and capture. Lia was much less active and we didn’t see her eating which was worrying! It was probably a response to the stress of the translocation. Because the next evening they were both doing much better; both were active, eating well and gouging to find gum.
On the 6th of September they were released from the pre-release cage in to the wild. Amazing that these 2 girls could return back to their natural habitat. They are monitored every evening now for the next weeks by the LFP team to make sure they really do well now that they are back in the wild.