Meet Chico the Orangutan

Earlier last week we received a call from an ‘owner’ of an unwanted pet ‘monkey’. They had asked the WFFT Team to meet them and discuss rehoming this monkey. Our founder Edwin headed out with a member of staff 2 days ago to discuss with the owners over a cup of coffee, to see what we could do to help. Edwin no longer travels alone due to recent events surrounding many high profile cases. Upon arrival it turned out that the monkey was actually an orangutan, an ape, in Thai language the words ape and monkey are indifferent. The ‘owner’ said he had the orangutan with him, and informed us that he is a 6-year-old Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) named ‘Chico’. We made the decision that we could help, the owner started by handing over the personal ‘belongings’ of the orangutan which included a child’s go-kart, various pieces of clothing including themed outfits, sugary foods and human toiletries. It seems that Chico has been treated like a human child, until he started to become aggressive and his captures were unable to handle him.

The Bornean orangutan is classified as Endangered (EN) by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to an estimated population decline of well over 50% during the last 60 years. This decline is predicted to continue at this rate, primarily because of forest loss due to conversion of forest to agriculture and fires. The majority of remnant wild populations are located outside of protected areas, in forests that are exploited for timber production or in the process of being converted to agriculture. Poaching and the pet-trade remain major threats to orangutans across most of Indonesia.

Chico is now at WFFT and is going through a short quarantine period before we plan to introduce him to the other Bornean orangutan housed here, the beautiful Maggie. For the moment our team is ensuring he continues to get lots of attention while he is settling into his new more natural life. We will keep you updated on his progress.