In the town of Kalimantan in Indonesia, a baby orangutan holds tightly to his malnourished mother after they were attacked by the villagers.
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Increasing numbers of orangutans have been making their way to nearby villages to find food, but locals class them as unwanted pests.
The forest fires still raging in Indonesia are not only troubling humans but orangutans inhabiting the woods of Sumatra and Borneo as well. The harrowing photo shows the mother orangutan, dubbed Mama Anti, and her tiny baby being rescued by a team from the organization global Animal Rescue (IAR).
The plight of this orangutan is emblamatic of a species that has seen its numbers drop 50 percent over the past 60 years, according to the global Union for Conservation of Nature, mostly due to rampant illegal logging and the conversion of tropical forests to palm oil plantations.
Worldwide Animal Rescue (IAR) has been working diligently to save stranded orangutans.
“It was very fortunate our rescue team got there in time, otherwise the orangutans would have been killed”, Karmele Llano Sanchez, of global Animal Rescue, told AFP.
Rescuers saw wounds on the mother’s skin, injured by rope that was tied on her wrist, and they said it has been nearly a month since they have eaten right. After administering IV fluids and attending to her wounds, they set to work in getting the small family back to a safe part of the forest. The team was able to rescue the mother and the baby orangutan by anaesthetising them immediately after reaching the spot. The pair are reportedly adapting well in a conservation area, the organisation said.
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They were both found to be extremely skinny and the mother was so weak and traumatised, she had to be anaesthetised with her baby still clinging to her.
