"Kick-boxing orangutans" rescued from Thailand!!

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Kick-boxing orangutan head home from Thailand

 

Last updated at 20:13pm on 21st November 2006 Reader comments (0)

Bewildered, afraid and with a deep distrust of humans, the orangutans cling to each other for comfort.

There is sadly no way to reassure them that their lives are about to take a dramatic turn for the better.

 

• See more pictures of the orangutan here

 

This animal is one of more than 100 forced to take part in degrading kick-boxing matches in a ring set up at a Thai amusement park.

Scoll down for more

 

 

 

But yesterday their freak-show existence was behind them after a rescue operation began to airlift them back to their home in the Indonesian rainforest.

 

Forty-eight of the abused apes, which had been seized in the wild and smuggled to Thailand, were taken from Bangkok's Safari World theme park. Wildlife officials wearing 'Welcome Home' T-shirts held the timid creatures' hands as they walked them to freedom.

 

The orang-utans were taken by road from Safari World to a rescue centre in Ratchaburi, 80 miles west of the Thai capital.

 

Kept in blue crates for safety, they are to be airlifted by military Hercules transport planes to Jakarta, where Indonesia's first lady Ani Yudhoyono will greet them.

 

Safari World's owners originally claimed the 115 orang-utans seized by wildlife police were the result of a domestic breeding programme. But DNA tests proved they had been brought illegally from Indonesia. As legal wrangles delayed their freedom many of their number died or disappeared from custody.

 

Indonesian officials said the apes would spend two months in quarantine before undergoing a two-year rehabilitation programme, then being released back into the jungle.

 

Fewer than 60,000 orang-utans are thought to be left in Borneo and Sumatra, and environmentalists say the species could become extinct in the wild within a decade if the current rate of decline continues.

 

Two weeks ago the Daily Mail told how at least 1,000 had died this year in the chaos caused by forest fires, most of which were deliberately started for land clearance.

 

An 'Animal Olympics' show at a Chinese zoo has been scrapped after it was highlighted in the Daily Mail. Publications around the world followed up the Mail's report about shackled bears, cycling monkeys and boxing kangaroos at the Shanghai Wild Animal Park.

 

The zoo received so many complaints from animal lovers that it abandoned the event. Will Travers, from the British charity Born Free, said: "On the face of it, this is great news, and it is thanks to the courage of the media for exposing it."