Contributed by, Nicola Gothard

Firstly, apologies for my lengthy absence from this e-zine.  I was in Sulawesi, Indonesia for 2 months volunteering at an animal rescue centre. Then upon my return I was mentally and physically exhausted and spent the last few weeks sleeping metaphorically and physically. However with a rising mojo I am back! Sometimes we all just need a little time out, especially in fields where you care deeply about issues that are so wide-spread and commonplace that it can tie you up in knots trying to figure out where to begin.

I digress, back to April when I went to volunteer at Tasikoki Animal Rescue Center. Now despite my passion for animal welfare, up until this point I had never volunteered in the ‘field’  unless you count my local RSPCA cat shelter. It was a total shock to the system which wasn’t helped by the severe sun burn and heat stroke that struck me on my stop-over in Singapore. 

The first night there was unbearably hot and I didn’t sleep a wink. So I was up and showered by the time the alarm clock went off at 5.30 am! Simon took us on our first day to show us the ropes. It was hot and tiring.  There are a lot of hills in Tasikoki. I was also terrified of the Macaques. They were stressed and scared – much like myself.  I was shocked by the conditions that they were living in. I thought to myself that their enclosures wouldn’t pass a lab inspection back in the UK. Aside from two release groups in Large open enclosures, the other macaques were kept either in solitary cages and slept on bars or in what I called cell block H where they live in small concrete enclosures with chicken wire walls. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the macaques in solitary looked worse off because of the bars and isolation but they were a lot calmer than those in cell block H. I think this was because in the cell block the macaques had no visual escape from each other, which caused a lot of stress and aggression.

There were some enclosures that were ok, for example the bears recieved a lot of enrichment and they had things to manipulate in an enclosure that was decent enough in size and it had a small pool which they liked to cool of in. The orangutans also had a decent sized enclosure, although they were bored and screaming out for some interaction. There in lay a dilemma – conservation vs animal welfare. From an animal welfare perspective, if human interaction with a captive wild animal improves their mental well-being then one should interact with them even if it is not natural. From a conservation perspective, these animals need to remain fearful of humans and true to their nature if they are ever to be returned to the wild. Then you have the shades of grey in between these two views when you start thinking about how long they have and will continue to be in captivity and if they do have a realistic chance of been rehabilitated to the wild. There was also a Javan leopard there, one of only 14 in the world and yet it had been languishing there for 6 years in a tiny enclosure and it was clearly very stressed even after all that time!  This really upsets me because I don’t care about the conservation of a species when I see an individual suffering so intensely and I also cease to care about my ‘theoretical morals’. In theory I disagree with zoos – it is wrong to take an animals life away from it for human entertainment. However I would have happily arranged for that leopard to leave and go to any zoo that could offer it a better life.  However not everyone would see it that way and if Tasikoki were to do that would they be accused of trading in wild animals? Many volunteers certainly wouldn’t want to see animals sent off to zoos. This is another problem in animal protection – idealism! Animals can actually suffer more if we refuse to compromise!

It is horrible for the animals at Tasikoki, there is no getting around that fact. They are bored and living in woefully inadequate conditions. However this is no reflection on the wonderfully dedicated people that run it. Just over a year ago the animals were in far worse condition – the enclosures were rarely cleaned and the animals were starving and extremely bored. Simon Purser was sent their to raise the level of animal welfare. He raised the number of feeds per day and made feeding times regular and predictable. This is very important to animals, particularly captive animals who have little else to to focus on and whom are entirely dependent on human beings. He also introduced a regular cleaning schedule and an enrichment schedule. So every day the animals were cleaned, fed and had some form of enrichment.  This was a huge step forward and he had to achieve all of this with sporadic and few volunteers and a reluctant work-force. In addition, there was little money and it was a monthly struggle to find enough to feed the animals and pay the keepers. Indonesia is known for corruption and many animal welfare and conservation organisations refuse to give funding to projects there and until very recently Tasikoki itself did have corrupt management. I can’t imagine how stressful that must have been and hats off to Simon for dedicating that much time and energy for so long.  It makes me angry that the animal protection world have all but turned their backs on Indonesia because in doing so, they have left so many animals languishing in horrible conditions.

Tasikoki is actually a huge site but there is just no money to buy materials to build enclosures to make use of the land. This is a tragedy. I would urge anyone and everyone to donate money or time to Tasikoki. The place is far from perfect but that is exactly why it needs our help. The management team – Simon and Malene are there and ready to make Tasikoki in to the wonderful wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center we know it can be but they can’t do it alone. They need people to help them care for the animals. If the number of volunteers doesn’t increase then they can do nothing more than maintain the status quo. When I was there, we had enough people to stick to the schedule and get everything done of immediate importance but we had little time for improving the enclosures or building new ones.  They also need money to pay for food, keepers, petrol, electricity and hopefully raise enough funds to build bigger and more suitable enclosures for the animals.

My time at Tasikoki was tough, especially at the beginning but I wouldn’t change it for anything, it was rewarding to help the animals but it was also enlightening. It took me out of my arm-chair ethics and challenged me to question my beliefs in the real world!

If  you would like to donate money to Tasikoki you can do so via paypal or credit card at redapes.org but make it clear that you would like the money to go to Tasikoki specifically.

If you are interested in volunteering at Tasikoki please visit the Tasikoki facebook page or go to www.tasikoki.org

Tags: captive animals, Indonesia, Tasikoki, volunteering, Wild Animals

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Animal Welfare in Action, Global Perspectives on Animal Welfare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.