Orangutan Needed 2 Years, 2 Zoos and a Private Plane to Get Home to Sumatra

A young Sumatran orangutan seized from an apartment in Dombivli, in the Mumbai area, in November 2024 was flown from Gujarat, India, to Medan, Indonesia, on Oct. 19 after two years of health and paperwork delays. He is now at the Sumatra Rescue Alliance, where experts plan to prepare him for eventual release into the wild.¹³

The trip was a long time coming. Mongabay India reported that the process between the two governments was held up by procedural hurdles and by the animal’s poor health.² “We have been preparing for this moment for the last two years,” Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of the Orangutan Information Centre, told Mongabay India.²

Orangutans are listed in Appendix I of CITES, the international treaty on wildlife trade, which bans commercial trade across borders in wild-caught animals.¹ Sending a seized animal back is a different matter from seizing it in the first place. “This is the first successful repatriation of a seized CITES animal from India and my office did everything in our capacity to make it happen,” Yogesh Nilkand Warkad, assistant management authority of CITES in Mumbai, told Mongabay.¹ StratNews Global also described the return as a first.⁴

The case comes as Mongabay India has reported rising smuggling of apes and other non-human primates into India, mostly by air from Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia.²

From a Dombivli apartment to a private plane

The orangutan was about one year old when officials took him from the apartment.² He was not the home’s only unusual resident. Officials also recovered 15 reptiles there, including pythons and iguanas.³

Related: At Least 4 of 6 Captive-Bred Rare Snakes Survive First Months in the Wild

He went first to Gorewada zoo in Maharashtra. At about 18 months old, suffering from a respiratory problem, he was moved to Vantara zoo in Gujarat for rehabilitation.²

His flight home was on a private aircraft, supervised by India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, Vantara staff and a delegation from the Indonesian government.⁴ He landed at Kualanamu Airport in Medan, where Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry held a reception attended by officials from the Indian Consulate General.³ India also waived all past costs of his care and upkeep.³

Quarantine first, then forest school

He is still in quarantine. After that he will attend a forest school to learn survival skills.¹² It is a long program. “If all goes to plan, he can be released in the wild in about four years,” Sinan Serhadli, a conservation scientist and adviser to YOSL-OIC, the group that runs the rescue center, told Mongabay.¹

Hadisiswoyo is optimistic about his chances. “He can certainly be rewilded. Even sub-adults can be rehabilitated and released into the wild,” he told Mongabay India.²

Five more babies are still in India

Conservationists hope this return can help five more orangutans, though nothing has been agreed. On Sept. 8, the Odisha Forest Department found five baby orangutans in the Balasore forest near the West Bengal border.⁵ The infants, estimated at 1 to 1.5 years old, remain at Nandankanan Zoological Park while authorities investigate where they came from and whether they were trafficked.¹

Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry says the babies appear to be Sumatran orangutans based on an initial physical look, but genetic testing is needed to confirm it.¹

Hadisiswoyo said Indonesia approached Indian authorities again after the Odisha discovery, and he credits international media attention with changing the course of the effort to bring the Dombivli orangutan home.¹²

Indonesia has proposed sending a seven-member team of officials, vets and orangutan specialists to check the Odisha infants’ health, welfare and origins. India has agreed to the visit in principle, and the arrangements are still being worked out.¹² “A team of experts from Indonesia will visit the babies soon and look into the paperwork needed,” Hadisiswoyo told Mongabay.¹

For now, one orangutan has made the trip. It took two years, two zoos and a private plane.