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Gunung
Leuser National Park, northwestern Sumatra, Indonesia
You
can’t believe that you’re this close to a wild orangutan,
one of the most endangered primates. For half an hour, with
Czech veterinarian Dr. Ivona Foitova and a park ranger, you’ve
been documenting all that a female orangutan, with a year-old
baby velcroed to her long red hair, is putting in her mouth.
She’s 10 meters up in a fig tree, so with binoculars
you’re getting a good look. So far, she’s been eating
a steady stream of figs; she spits out the unripe ones. Orangutans
seem deliberate in everything they do. The baby watches intently,
occasionally aping her actions with a clumsy reach toward
a fig. His fascination is well-placed, for he has much to
learn if he is ever to manage a healthy diet for himself among
a legion of plants, many of which are toxic. That’s why
orangutan infants stay with their mothers for so long. Reintroduced
to the wild three years ago after spending her infancy in
captivity, this female is a success story. She has mastered
the dietary challenge. You watch as she abruptly abandons
the fig tree for a nearby dark-barked tree, seeks out a twig,
and gnaws at the pith. You note the change on a checksheet,
and a teammate marks the tree with surveyor’s tape and
collects sample twigs.
Foitova,
a parasitologist with Saving the Pongidae Foundation who holds
a research assistantship at Masaryk University in Brno, for
the past five years has been documenting such behavior and
collecting samples of all the different items these great
apes eat to determine whether they choose natural antidotes
to parasites and, if so, what those might be. An increasing
concern in conservation is that the growing human population
may be transmitting its diseases to orangutans. Thus your
data may not only prove critical in saving this most solitary
of the great apes and its habitat, but might eventually uncover
compounds useful in combating parasites in other great apes
and humans as well. Previous studies of both chimpanzees and
gorillas in Africa suggest that these great apes rid themselves
of nematode worms by swallowing certain leaves or types of
pith and may control intestinal upsets by eating clay. Foitova
has lined up an impressive, international cadre of off-site
specialists connected to some of the most prestigious labs
in the world to analyze the soil and plant samples you’ll
help gather for evidence of antiparasitic chemicals. If preliminary
analysis yields potentially effective chemicals, she’ll
come back and collect larger samples for more extensive testing.
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1 9 9 9 . T E A M S
I: Aug 2-16 • II: Sep 6-20 • III: Oct 4-18 •
IV: Nov 1-14 • Max team size: 5
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2 0 0 0 . T E A M S
V: Jan 5-19 • VI: Feb 1-15 • VII: Mar 2-16 •
VIII: Apr 1-15 • Max team size: 5 • For other teams,
call for detail •
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M E M B E R S ' . S H A R E . O F . C O S T S
from US $1,895 • £1,150 • Aus$2,915 •
Yen ¥222,400
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R E N D E Z V O U S . S I T E
International Airport, Medan, Sumatra, Indonsesia
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V O L U N T E E R T A S K S
In
and around the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in the village
of Bukit Lawang, you and your teammates will divide your time
roughly equally between following and making behavioral observations
of reintroduced and quarantined orangutans (always with a
park ranger); marking and later collecting herb, fruit, soil,
and fecal samples; and assisting with preparation of samples
in the lab. On follow days, you’ll be up at 5:30 and
may hike 10 kilometers; on other days you’ll sleep in
’til 8:00. If you’ve got a grounding in lab procedures
or biology, so much the better. Because the animals you follow
(every third or fourth day) are used to humans, you can expect
to get an intimate portrait of orangutan life. Hiking in tough
terrain and high humidity will have further pay-offs: In its
brackish swamps, lowland forests, river terraces, and volcanic
mountains, the 800,000-hectare park harbors 130 mammal species
(including gibbons, clouded leopards, Sumatran tigers, elephants,
and Sumatran rhinos) and 325 species of birds.
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F I E L D . C O N D I T I O N S
A simple, clean bungalow in Bukit Lawang, 5 minutes’
walk from the park, offers beds with mosquito nets, cold-water
showers, and Asian toilets; a cook will provide Indonesian
dishes of rice, fish, chicken, vegetables, and fruit. Because
of the orangutan rehab center, Bukit Lawang is a popular tourist
destination. RIGOROUS
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programs