This baby orangutan, chained for months in a family home, was finally rescued. She is only 18 months old and was chained by her neck to a wooden plank that prevented her from moving freely for six months, but the organization  International Animal Rescue (IAR)  , learned of the situation in which Bonika was.

IAR located in Ketapang, West Borneo, immediately dispatched a rescue team that undertook a 200-kilometer journey to help her.

She was captured by Bapak Hendrigus, a Sandai district resident, after he found her while working in a rubber tree plantation. He saw Bonika thin and lonely, so he decided to make her the family pet.

After a while, Hendrigus and his family learned that keeping a wild orangutan as a pet was an illegal act, but they did not know how and with whom they should contact.

The orangutan was fed with rice, cookies, bread, mineral water, sugar cane and baby milk during her stay in this family’s house, and was also released in the mornings and afternoons for a few moments, but the rest of For some time she was chained to the wooden plank located in the kitchen, in order to prevent her escape.

Bonika is currently under medical observation and will remain in quarantine for a few more weeks to verify that her health is optimal before beginning her rehabilitation and thus return to the natural habitat to which she belongs and from where she should never have been removed.

Alan Knight OBE, Executive Director of IAR , said:

“What a miserable existence of a wild baby orangutan, chained to a narrow plank of wood without the company and comfort of its mother.”

“However, it is encouraging that Pak Hendrigus found out that it was wrong to keep her as a pet, at least now she has the opportunity to live the life that nature intends for her.”

Baby orangutan chained for months was rescued 

“We are relieved that Bonika is now in our care, but also deeply saddened by the likely fate of her mother.”

“No orangutan mother is willing to walk away from her baby, and Bonika’s mother was almost certainly killed.”

“In July, the Bornean orangutan was reclassified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered.”

“Babies like Bonika are our hope for the future, but it takes the will of everyone involved in the descent of the orangutans to commit to preserving the rainforest these magnificent great apes need to survive.”