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Jakarta. Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan on Monday vowed to speed up issuing permits for orangutan release areas in Central Kalimantan, saying the longer they were kept in cages, the harder it would be for them to adapt to their natural habitat.

Around 611 orangutans are still in cages at the Nyaru Menteng orangutan rehabilitation center in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, managed by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

Of these, 141 are ready for release into the wild. However, there are still difficulties in finding a suitable habitat for the apes.

The BOS Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1991, has been focusing on reintroducing orangutans to their natural environment at its rehabilitation centers.

So far, around 300 orangutans have been released in East Kalimantan province. “I appreciate what BOS is doing here, but we can't keep [the orangutans] here for long, considering that there are limits to their resilience,” Zulkifli said after a short visit to Nyaru Menteng.

 “They could get too stressed and end up dead in the cages.”

In Central Kalimantan, Zulkifli added, many forest areas had been converted into palm oil plantations — monoculture forests where the orangutan has no chance of survival.

“So one of the solutions is to find places where they can be released immediately,” he said. “We’ve found suitable locations for their release,” he added, citing an area of 106,450 hectares in East Kalimantan, previously granted to timber companies Mugitriman and Narkata.

Zulkifli also identified areas of 94,000 hectares managed by Akhates Plywood and 68,000 hectares managed by Tunggul Pemenang  in Central Kalimantan.

“We’ll try to find other locations to replace those areas because [the companies are not at fault],” he said, adding that if the companies did not agree to the proposition, their concessions would be revoked.

Fransiska Sulistiwo, a veterinarian at Nyaru Menteng, said the rehabilitation center was already overpopulated as it had been designed to accommodate a maximum of 300 orangutans.

“The main problem is to find the right location to release them,” Fransiska said, adding that orangutans needed to be released into primary forests.

Hadi Daryanto, the Forestry Ministry’s director general of forest production, said the government had already issued an “ecosystem restoration” permit that would allow the orangutans to be released into the wild.