Rescuing Robin Hood

(Story from Friday June 06, 2008)

There is a constant stream of communication going on between IAR workers, locals, the department of forestry, other rescue centers and anyone else with an interest about local events, developments, politics and the location of illegally kept animals. As an outsider who will only be here for a short time, doesn’t know the language and customs and is otherwise out of the loop it can be a challenge to keep up with what is going on. Luckily Karmele and the team have been very helpful with keeping me up to date, filling in the details and back story to different events and making sure I can come along and shoot. After that it’s up to me to make sure I get enough footage to tell the story. It can be exhausting trying to make sure the lens is clean, the sound is on, the iris is set, the shutter speed, the focus! Oh no! The focus! And then I forget to press the record button… damn! But I’m getting better and this Friday we had a really interesting case: a critically endangered Javan Gibbon was being illegally held somewhere in a village near the IAR headquarters.

Karmele had a contact, an address and we were going to go pick it up but then suddenly it fell through. She received word that the Gibbon was no longer there. There was a lot of frustration that the department of forestry had not acted more swiftly to either pick it up or authorize IAR to do so and now it was gone. She didn’t know if it would ever be located again.

Then suddenly she received a call on her cell phone and we were back in action. We jumped into two vehicles, the burgundy IAR mini bus and a truck for transport and took off.

Even with four batteries I am constantly running behind making sure I have enough charged. One of them doesn’t hold a full charge, two are larger and last longer and one holds a charge but is quite small. I find myself making frantic equipment checks along the way and thus far (knock on wood) haven’t made any really bad mistakes. The worst so far was I ran out of tape and had to overwrite something but I had already backed it up to disk so it wasn’t so bad.

We drove through a maze of back roads and about forty minutes later met up with Argito who directed us to the house of the man holding the Gibbon. He was apparently looking after it for his brother. Argito and Asman had spotted it and inquired about it and he had expressed a willingness to give it up. Perhaps he feared the fine that he could receive for holding a Gibbon captive.

Apparently the Gibbon had started behaving aggressively towards him so he had had it moved. He climbed into the mini van with us to take us to where the Gibbon was being held. I noticed the man, who I estimated to be around 50 years old, was wearing a grey “Polisi” (Police in Indonesian) t-shirt. I wondered whether this was meant to convey some sense of authority. When Karmele told him I would be shooting video he assured her in Indonesian that filming “wouldn’t be necessary”.

We turned off the pitted, pot-holed little road onto an even smaller, more decrepit one-lane road and drove for another 15min. or so to a small village. In a courtyard under a leafy tree there was a wood and chicken-wire, garbage strewn cage holding the Silvery Javan Gibbon, Robin Hood.

I’m not sure where he got his name from or whether those who gave it to him knew the story of the man who stole from the rich to give to the poor but I found it to be an interesting moniker for a captive wild animal held by what appeared to be a rather well-off man in a very poor rural village. In fact, recalling the “Polisi” t-shirt, it reminded me of Robin Hood’s imprisonment by the Sherriff of Nottingham.

The whole crew except for me got out and took stock of the situation while I stayed in the car, discreetly filming. After a few minutes Karmele came and told me to come out and film and just go back to the car if anyone made a stink about it. I came out and filmed and no one said anything. The man holding Robin captive looked a little nervous but with the whole village looking on he probably felt somewhat flattered at the attention.

He demonstrated how the children had tormented Robin Hood with bamboo sticks and how he had behaved aggressively toward them. I wasn’t able to follow all of this but judging from the filthy cage, purpose built without a door, and Robin’s underfed condition it was clear that we were rescuing him from a miserable situation.

Despite this we found Robin to be surprisingly friendly toward humans. Someone had obviously at some point treated him relatively kindly, although in respect to the fact that he was being held captive at all he had been gravely abused. Gibbons live their entire lives in trees, swinging from branch to branch, flying meters at a time through the air with balance and elegance and putting them in a cage is torture.

I filmed as the IAR team lifted the cage into the back of the 4x4. We shook hands all around and the villagers gave us a wealth of brilliant Indonesian smiles. Then we piled back into the vehicles and drove off back to IAR headquarters with Robin nervously prowling his swaying cage.
Robin had developed diarrhea in his agitated state during transport. There was little way for him to know he was on his way to an improved situation and he was probably terrified. He was unloaded and left to calm down. During the course of the afternoon he received some enrichment in the form of leafs and branches, food and water and what little comfort people could give; we stopped by and he would hold out his hand to be held or present his back to be scratched. Gibbons form monogamous pairs in the wild and so he understandably craved some contact.

The next day he we would bring him to the Javan Gibbon Center where they specialize in rehabilitating, re-socializing and reintroducing Gibbons to the wild.