ORANG UTANS are getting a taste of forest life at the Singapore Zoo in the first such facility of its kind.
Rather than clamber atop artificial wooden jungle gyms in their enclosure, they are now free to climb 24m-tall trees in a wooded retreat not unlike their natural homes.
Visitors this past month have been surprised at the sight of these gentle arboreal creatures deftly swinging on vines and perching on treetops to gaze into the distance.
The 6,000 sq m 'free-ranging facility' is a first for orang utans in a zoo anywhere, said the zoo's executive director, Ms Fanny Lai.
The trees, linked together by a series of vines and hammocks, are just outside the animals' current enclosure.
Every morning, zookeepers lead them to the free-ranging facility, where they can spend hours lingering amid the trees.
The facility was opened earlier this month as an early Earth Day gift to these highly endangered primates.
Small innovations such as these, along with diligent matchmaking, have allowed the zoo's orang utan population to thrive.
Over the past 32 years, the zoo has bred 32 orang utans. 'That's something we are quite proud of, given that the female orang utans can get pregnant only once every seven to eight years,' said Ms Lai. There are now 25 orang utans - possibly the largest troop for a zoo. The youngest was born just two weeks ago.
Two other zoos renowned for breeding orang utans, Jakarta's Schmutzer Primate Centre and the Melbourne Zoo, together have only 18 such creatures.
'This may be a zoo, but we want to give these animals as close an experience as possible' to what they would have experienced if they were in the wild, said Ms Lai.
The orang utans now have about 10 times the space they once did, enjoying free access to about a dozen tall trees similar to those found in their native homes, the lush rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo.
Many of the orang utans here were born in captivity. 'They had never climbed a tree before - yet once we set them free, they began climbing naturally, as if they had been doing it all their lives,' said Ms Lai. 'It was quite amazing.'
Estimates from the Great Apes Survival Project, a United Nations endeavour to conserve various primate species, show that there are 15,000 orang utans left in the wild, less than a tenth of what existed a century ago.
Conserving this species is especially important, as orang utans are among man's closest cousins, sharing 97 per cent of the same genetic material.
While protecting these creatures in their natural habitats is the ideal solution, the task is proving increasingly difficult, say non-governmental organisations involved in wildlife conservation such as Traffic, which was set up by the World Wildlife Fund and the International Conservation Union.
Deforestation - which robs these creatures of their natural homes - and poaching have been the biggest threat to their survival, said Traffic's programme officer for South-east Asia Julia Ng.
'The zoo has given these animals a chance to breed safely in an environment that is as close to their natural homes as possible,' she said.
'That's simply invaluable.'
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