Smuggled wildlife benefits from World Animal Day
In 2017, the World Animal Day grant supported our project in Sumatra to construct two forest rehabilitation enclosures to rehabilitate confiscated sun bear cubs before releasing them back to the wild.
We were expecting to rescue a number of smuggled bear cubs but our fears haven’t been realised – which is a very good thing for the bears of course. We rescued a cub in March 2019 but, since then the enclosures have been put to very good use for other animals in our care.
At the moment, the grant-funded enclosures are home to three rescued primates and last month we released 45 turtles who also occupied part of the enclosure during their stay with us.
We rescue wildlife weekly and, in the last month alone we have rescued 3,900 birds from the illegal trade.
As the number of animals arriving at our centre is high, we are happy that we can use these enclosures to help all animals confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade.
The three primates we care for now are one adult female and two juveniles. We aim to release them back to the forest once they have been rehabilitated and are ready to return to the wild.
Femke den Haas
Jakarta Animal Aid Network
World Animal Day Ambassador