NORTHERN SUMATRA, Indonesia. Welcome to jungle school—where orphaned orangutans are learning the basics for survival that they will need for life in the wild.

At the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC) in Northern Sumatra, vets and biologists are rehabilitating orangutans who have been confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade. Once they have mastered the basics of climbing, building nests and finding food, the aim is that they will one day be returned to the wild.

The Sumatran orangutan was once found throughout the island of Sumatra’s lowland forests. But due to decades of habitat loss, poaching and conflict killings they have experienced an estimated population decline of over 80% in the last 75 years.

Sanctuaries in Sumatra like OIC are working on the frontlines of conservation, to give these rescued orangutans a second chance at life.

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Banner image: Collage featuring Izzy Sasada, Mongabay contributor, with an orangutan.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

So this is basically like jungle school
but for orangutans. Yes.
Our good students.
Here in Sumatra
is one of the only places in the world
where wild orangutans exist.
But due to habitat loss
and the illegal wildlife trade,
many of them are ending up in
centers like this one.

We’re about to go and meet some of the keepers
who are looking after the orangutans who live here.

So where are we on the way to now?

So we’re going to collect our
orangutan babies for the jungle school.
So we will teach them to survive in the wild.
We’ll release them in their adult age.

Up here these are some of the orangutans
who have lost their mothers in the wild,
and who are learning essential skills
that they need to survive.

So right now,
they’re learning how to climb the trees.
Normally, skills like these
would be learned from their mothers.
As most of them are orphans
they are learning from the keeper here.

I record the activities of the orangutans
who are in this forest school.
They do many things like
building nests, look for food, and so on.

So why is this important for the rehabilitation process?
Because we need to know to what extent these orangutans
can do things just like they would in the forest later.

What about these guys? Have they improved?

They have developed quite well.
In the past, they couldn’t forage for themselves,
couldn’t build nests,
weren’t able to choose the right branches to climb.
And now they have mastered almost all of those things.

They’re victims of wildlife trade,
poaching, and also victims of forest loss.
Forest fragmentation is very bad for orangutans
because they need such a big forest to roam.

Many, many poaching for wildlife trade is
happening in the fragmented forest.
Orangutans are isolated in a small pack
and then easily targeted by poachers.

The main reason for the orangutans to be here is because
we want to bring them back to the wild.
They have a very important role in the ecosystem
and they have the right to have a second chance at life.