Smuggled apes on the way home
Officials at an animal rescue centre in Ratchaburi carry some of the 48 orang-utans to cages on trucks prior to their return to Indonesia.
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The 48 smuggled orang-utans rescued from Bangkok's Safari World Zoo are on their way back to their native Indonesia and expected to arrive at noon today, Thai officials said yesterday.
The move is the first in years in which smuggled animals have been returned from Thailand, and officials expect more countries to contact them to get back animals that have been illegally captured and smuggled here, especially some Madagascar turtles. Three years after a raid on the tourist park - where many of the apes staged mock kick-boxing bouts to amuse visitors - the orang-utans were yesterday placed in cages and taken from an animal rescue centre to Bangkok, where they were to be put onto an Indonesian C-130 military transport plane for the flight home. When the plane arrives in Jakarta, the Indonesian government will hold a ceremony to welcome the endangered apes back, said director-general of the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department Chalermsak Vanichsombat. Wildlife activists last night criticised the transporting of the apes, saying the government's failure to provide covers for the cages carrying them had left them vulnerable to infection. "It's ridiculous and dangerous," Edwin Wiek, a representative of the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation, said. "We have a long drive to Bangkok airport and the orang-utans are in open cages on the back of trucks. If we get any rain, we might have cases of pneumonia. "We offered to provide covers for the cages but they declined." Wiek will accompany the animals to Borneo.
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