Komet and Ori in the new enclosure

On the 26th March, Ori and Komet discovered their new enclosure for the first time, one by one. On the 27th, they spent the whole day together playing in the enclosure, climbing trees, digging, rolling in the dry leaves, chasing one another. They love it. 

Thanks to all who have made this possible. Below, a few pictures of the last 2 days.

Patrick Rouxel

Almost finished

Thanks to all the donations made through this blog and to a substantial contribution from Hauser Bears, we have now raised almost $13 000 USD, which is actually just about enough to cover the costs for making the new enclosure for Ori and Komet. It is thus with great joy that I would like to thank all of you who have made this new enclosure possible.

Ori and Komet have been moved from their old cage to the new feeding cage and are now impatiently waiting to have access to their 650 m2 enclosure.  Within a few days this should be possible. There is just a little finishing to be done. We’re almost there.

Patrick Rouxel

A new enclosure for Ori and Komet

Last year, Help the Bears, a non-profit organization registered in France, designed and constructed a large forest enclosure for 3 captive sun bears at the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) Care Center in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. This year, Help the Bears is now making a new enclosure for another 2 sun bears at OFI whose names are Ori and Komet. This new enclosure and its feeding cage will cost about $15 000 USD to build. It will be 650 m2 in size. The construction began on February 2nd and should be finished by end of March 2015.

Ori is a young male who was given to OFI in January 2014 by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry. In August 2014 he was brought to a release site for rehabilitation to life in the wild, but for a number of reasons the rehab didn’t work out and 3 months later Ori was back in a cage at the OFI Care Centre, the person in charge of Ori left the country and the rehabilitation was abandoned. Ori is now too old and too habituated to human beings to be released and he is unfortunately destined to spend his whole life in captivity. I thus decided to make him an enclosure so that he, at least, doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life behind cage bars.

Komet is also a young male who was given to OFI in October 2015 by a private owner who had kept him as a pet. He too was extremely habituated to human beings and probably too old to be able to successfully return to life in the wild. He was thus neutered and later placed with Desi, Hilda and Bonnie in the large forest enclosure. But although things went well at first and all four bears got along fine, Desi and Hilda later ganged up against Komet and made his life miserable. For his own safety it was decided to remove Komet from the group and put him with Ori, who was alone in a cage since his return from the forest.

Ori and Komet have been together since December 30th 2014 and are good friends. They are like two brothers who like to play a lot. But they get very frustrated from the lack of space and distraction in their cage. They have a dire need to be able to run, dig and climb trees. The new enclosure, initially planned for Ori, will allow Komet to enjoy a little space too. Of course 650 m2 of forest is not a lot for two sun bears, but it’s still much better than a cage.

Last year OFI paid 43% of the cost of making the big enclosure for Desi, Hilda and Bonnie, while Help The Bears provided the missing 57% thanks to private donations and to two organizations called Hauser Bears in Germany and AVES in France. This year OFI is unable to participate financially and Help the Bears must raise the totality of the $15 000 USD necessary to make the new enclosure (cost of construction supplies and local labour).

This is why I reach out for your generosity. In the name of Ori and Komet, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for any donation you can make.

Patrick Rouxel

Founder of Help the Bears

Supervisor for the “enclosure project” in Indonesia.

For the latest update on last year’s enclosure:

http://help3sunbears.blogspot.com