Forest School starts!

We’ve had word from Sintang Orangutan Center (SOC) in Indonesia to say the first stage of work has started to build a second Forest School in Jerora, which DZC is funding.

We’ve pledged £100,000 over a five-year period to SOC, which specialises in the rescue, rehabilitation and release of the great apes, which will enable them to build a further two-hectare jungle enclosure two kilometres away from Sintang, to allow a number of orangutans the chance to learn basic survival skills, such as climbing, foraging for food and nest building, before they’re released into protected wild forests.

Initial work has included the team manually clearing land to make a pathway ahead of installing and concreting into the ground more than 130 3.5-metre-high ironwood poles around the Forest School’s perimeter, which will hold the 520-metre electric fencing.

A progress report sent by the SOC Team, states: “We are very grateful to Dudley Zoo and Castle for their contribution in funding the process of creating a second forest school in Jerora. By this support, SOC will be able to carry out the learning process at forest school for more orangutans in the same time. It will speed up the rehabilitation process in order to release orangutans as soon as possible.”