I’ll be all white in the wild! Albino orangutan set free
WHEN Alba was found starving in a cage and suffering an infection 20 months ago, conservationists feared the world was about to lose its only known albino orangutan.
But yesterday the six-year-old ape looked delighted to be back in the swing of things as she was released into the wild – her appropriately snow-white fur gleaming in the sunny days before Christmas.
Within minutes of her return to the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya national park, in the remote Borneo jungle, the orangutan was climbing trees, foraging for food and building a nest.
Alba – whose name means ‘white’ in Latin – was named after thousands responded to an appeal worldwide.
Her fuzzy pale fur and piercing blue eyes make her one of the most unique animals on earth.
She had been stolen from the wild and was being kept as a pet, in terrible conditions, by locals in an Indonesian village in the Central Kalimantan province of the island.
Conservationists from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), acting on a tip-off, discovered her bloodied and weighing little more than a stone in April last year.
They have been caring for Alba at a rehabilitation centre, where she has tripled in weight, ever since.
The charity originally planned to create a 12-acre ‘forest island’ for Alba because they were worried about possible health issues relating to her albinism in the wild – including bad eyesight, poor hearing and skin cancer.
They also feared her appearance could make her a target for poachers. But a government conservation agency released Alba – described as ‘very confident’ by the BOSF – into her natural habitat because of her intrinsically wild behaviour. She will be electronically tracked and regularly monitored by a medical team.
Alba was returned to the wild with her best friend, Kika, another rehabilitated orangutan. ‘So far she’s showing good signs of adapting. She’s been climbing trees as high as 35metres,’ a BOSF spokesman said.
Orangutans, usually reddish-brown, are critically endangered and only found in the wild on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and on Borneo.
‘She’s been climbing 35metre trees’