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:
