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JAKARTA - Forty-eight orangutans were flown to Indonesia by special military flight yesterday - survivors of one of the biggest cases of great ape smuggling ever detected.
Captured in the jungles of Borneo, they were found in an amusement park in Thailand where they were forced to take part in daily kick-boxing matches against each other.
Their sad case is just a rare, visible example of the thriving black market in exotic wildlife in Southeast Asia, most of which goes unseen.
Officials say it generates around US$10 billion ($14.9 billion) a year, putting the illegal wildlife trade behind only gun-running and drug smuggling in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia rolled out the red carpet for the orangutans' return yesterday. The first lady, Kristiani Yudhoyono, was at the airport for their arrival, carrying an orangutan doll in her hands and flanked by officials in T-shirts that said "Welcome home".
The orangutan, which lives only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, is seriously endangered.
Conservationists estimate there may be as few as 60,000 left in the wild, the majority in Indonesia, and their numbers are in constant threat as their natural habitat is encroached on by man. Forest fires set by farmers clearing land for palm oil plantations have stripped their habitat.
In recent years they have come under serious threat from the craze for pet orangutans in Indonesian cities. Because baby orangutans are more desirable, hunters kill the mothers and take the young. Many conservationists now fear the orangutan could be wiped out in the wild within 10 years.
The orangutans that were flown back to Indonesia yesterday were found at Safari World, a private zoo near Bangkok, where they were forced to put on shows for tourists wearing boxing gloves and simulating kick-boxing matches. The zoo's owners at first claimed the animals had all been bred in captivity - which would have meant it was legal for the zoo to own them under Thai law.
But investigators were not convinced and demanded DNA tests, which proved the orangutans were born in the wild and had been illegally smuggled. The zoo was immediately shut down. But that was in 2004. In the years that followed, the orangutans were trapped amid legal battles over their future.
Even after the legal hurdles were cleared, their return to Indonesia was delayed by September's coup in Thailand. Indonesia plans to release the orangutans into a forest reserve on Borneo.
- INDEPENDENT
