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Gokong Puntung, a one-year-old male orangutan, rescued from a chicken cage at a house in Aceh, Sumatra. The owner said he had bought the young ape from peopke who had taken it from a palm oil plantation. Conservationists believe the animal's mother would have been killed, because orangutans would not voluntarily be parted from their offspring. Gokong Puntung is recovering at a quarantine centre outside the town of Medan and it is hoped that he will one day be able to be released back into the protected forest.. It is thought that there are just 200 orangutans left in the Tripa Swamp Forest, from where the young ape was taken, where once there were about 2,000. They have been killed or displaced by the spread of palm oil plantations. In 1990 there were an estimated 60,000 hectares of swamp forest: now just 10,000 are left.
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- © Gethin Chamberlain
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