Manager of the Sumatra Orangutan Observation Centre in Bukit Lawang, Riswan Bangun said the man was currently being treated at the Colombia Hospital in Medan. Photo / iStock
Manager of the Sumatra Orangutan Observation Centre in Bukit Lawang, Riswan Bangun said the man was currently being treated at the Colombia Hospital in Medan. Photo / iStock
Andrew Stone this month visited the Bukit Lawang jungle village in northern Indonesia where a New Zealand tourist was attacked by an orang-utan
The Sumatran sanctuary where a New Zealand tourist was bitten by an orangutang attracts thousands of visitors a year.
The sheer weight of numbers loads pressure on jungle guides to deliver sightings of the animals to the hordes of tourists who travel to the remote destination.
There are two ways to catch a glimpse of the endangered tree-dwellers. Every afternoon, Bukit Lawang guides will escort groups on a 15-minute walk to a platform at the jungle edge. The guides, loaded with clumps of bananas and a bucket of milk, clamber onto the wooden platform and knock it to alert the animals that afternoon tea has arrived.
Depending on the mood of the apes, one or more is more than likely to swing down from the forest canopy for a meal. After all, a delivery of favourite food is difficult to resist.
The animals then, while they live in the jungle, have formed a food habit. They know that around mid-afternoon every day a feed awaits them on the wooden platform.
Visitors kept back a safe 10 metres can click away with their cameras and record the encounter. On the day we visited a solitary animal swooped down from the towering forest trees and spent perhaps 10 minutes slurping from a coconut bowl and devouring bananas, carefully discarding each skin. Before disappearing, it grabbed a bunch and clasped the fruit under an arm as it skilfully climbed back to the tree tops.
The experience cost about $40. It was money well-spent.
The other way to see the animals is by joining a two or three-day jungle trek. This, it seems, is where trouble can arise because tourists who have paid upwards of $200 expect something back on their investment.
That something is an encounter on the trail with an orangutan. Enquiring about the odds of actually seeing an animal, we were advised it was at least 70 per cent on a trek, and half that on the platform walk.
Photo from Bukwit Lawang. Photo / Andrew Stone
To raise the odds, guides take favourite foods into the humid forest. Sightings are reported via the Sumatran bush telegraph and trekking groups pass locations where the animals were last seen. Though visitors are warned to be wary it is tempting to pack fruit into packs to share in the special thrill of feeding the apes.
This is when trouble can flare. The orangutan are semi-socialised, semi-wild. They can be spooked easily. A tourist with fruit hopeful for a peaceful encounter can find themselves threatened by an animal that wants the bananas in the backpack.
It was fortunate that Binula Wickramarachchi was just bitten on the knee, though the ape could transfer a nasty infection. It could have been much worse for him.
For the orangutan, reported to be 38-year-old Minah, the outlook is uncertain. She apparently had an earlier life as a pet so was in the process of being rehabilitated into the jungle. It would be a tragedy if the incident spelt her end. She was, after all, behaving in an environment where humans and wild animals share an unpredictable relationship.
