Case Study Seven: Staff Go Wild
Mission: To take part in an orangutan workshop in Indonesia and share knowledge, and to visit the Realm of the Red Ape Programme partners in Malaysian Borneo
Name: Alison Kelsall
Job Title: Senior Vet Nurse
Country: Indonesia and Malaysia
First Stop: Orangutan Veterinary Advisory Group Workshop, Indonesia
Why? Organised by our Veterinary Officer, Steve Unwin on behalf of the Orangutan Conservancy, the workshop provided technical assistance to orangutan rehabilitation centres on Borneo.
Andrea Fidgett, the zoo’s nutritionist, and I accompanied Steve to the workshop. My role was to provide information on practical skills such as taking radiographs and anaesthetic darting.
Impressions of the workshop: The workshop provides a rare opportunity for vets working in orangutan rehabilitation centres to get together. The workshop was instrumental in allowing them to be able to gain further training, share information and have open discussions which, was clearly extremely valuable.
Their enthusiasm was obvious and bringing them together for both formal training and informal discussions will no doubt be helpful in ensuring their continued commitment and also encourage them to in turn educate others, such as centre managers. 
Next stop: HUTAN – Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Programme (KOCP), Sabah, Malaysian Borneo
Why? Chester Zoo’s Realm of the Red Ape Programme supports the HUTAN-KOCP project. We visited their base to catch up with the team and learn about their day to day activities in the field.
First impressions: All of the HUTAN-KOCP team that I met were clearly very dedicated and proud, quite rightly, of the work that they do. I was amazed at their quiet determination to change things for the better in order that the forest and the wildlife that it supports can survive and hopefully grow from the devastation caused by palm oil planting.
The staff that I met were all local villagers that had embraced the conservation message and were desperate that their work continued and that their knowledge and enthusiasm could be passed on to the next generation. Their work with schools is vital to the long term success of many of their projects; we need the future generations to share in HUTAN-KOCP’s ideas and to care about their natural surroundings and its inhabitants.
Hardest part of the trip: The first night in the home stay worrying about rats and bugs eating me! Needless to say I survived and forgot all my worries as soon as I stepped onto the river boat and was overwhelmed by the awesome surroundings.
Most memorable moment: On the last morning of our trip, planting a sapling in the forest. The Hutan team invest a lot of time and money into not only planting trees but tending to them for the years they take to establish before being fully integrated into the forest.