Katarina is a victim of the illegal wildlife trade. She was kept as a pet and after she became too big to handle was given up to the Lipis zoo. She has now spent a few years at a zoo which clearly does not receive proper funding. Anyone who visits this zoo will be able to tell it it is not managed well. Many animals there require help, let alone and delicate species such as the orangutan.
Supervision of animals at this zoo, like in almost every Malaysian zoo, is virtually non-existent. Visitors can be seen feeding Katarina junk food and one visitor was stopped from tossing into the enclosure a lit cigarette hoping the orangutan would smoke it. Can you imagine what happens everyday at this zoo?
While the pandas at Zoo Negara receive daily enrichment without fail, Katarina receives none. She has nothing to keep her mind and body busy everyday in her almost barren enclosure.
Orangutans are extremely smart animals known to be as intelligent as young children and a lack of enclosure stimulation greatly effects their mental and physical health. Katarina’s night cage is also completely void of any bedding nor enrichment tool and she is forced to sit on cold concrete everyday for at least 12 hours. Horrible treatment of an ape species which generates tonnes of income from tourism.
Though orangutans are mostly solitary animals in the wild, they should never be forced to live all alone in captivity. Katarina has spent her days all alone for years now, with nothing to look forward to every day.
It is time she is relocated to the Matang Wildlife Centre in Sarawak, where the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) provides excellent captive care for orangutans at its sanctuary. Perhilitan, the wildlife department, has sent orangutans to Matang previously, and they can do it again for Katarina.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made it mandatory for all zoos in the USA to provide enrichment for all non-human primates. Zoos are also expected to show documentation of what enrichment they have been giving to a USDA inspector if they request it. Another USDA requirement is that if a zoo has a non-human primate living alone it has to document why as they also regulate that non-human primates have social contact.
If orangutans (and other primates for that matter) can be treated extremely well in a western country well out of its range, orangutans in Malaysia must be given equal if not better treatment. A mind-blowing RM60 million so far has been spent on two pandas from China. The least the NRE Ministry can do is to urgently relocate Katarina to provide her the best possible treatment in Sarawak. The world is looking, and waiting.
Friends of the Orangutans and our supporters around the world ask the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to immediately transfer Katarina the suffering orangutan to the Matang Wildlife Centre sanctuary in Sarawak.
UPRESHPAL SINGH is director, Friends of the Orangutana.
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