SUMATRA ADVENTURE HOLIDAYS SPECIALISE IN
NORTH SUMATRA TOURS AND BUKIT LAWANG TOURS AND TREKS
Bukit Lawang is the perfect base for your North Sumatra holiday with small guest houses, outdoor cafes and restaurants, an internet cafe, shops for basic supplies (toilet paper, bottles water, some food and soft drink and souvenirs) . You can walk to Gunung Leuser National Park and the Bukit Lawang orangutan feeding platform from your guest house and we also offer a number of bicycle tours and days trips from Bukit Lawang to the markets, hot springs, waterfalls, school visit, white water rafting and Tangkahan elephants.
BOHOROK ORANGUTAN CENTRE – BUKIT LAWANG ORANGUTANS
Located just outside Bukit Lawang Gunung Leuser National Park, in Sumatra, the Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre is about 90 kms from Medan. The Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre is a famous rehabilitation centre that was set up in 1973, by two Swiss zoologists, Regina Frey and Monica Boerner, to help primates to get readjusted to the wild after confinement or dislocation.
The orangutans of Sumatra are an endangered species, with loss of habitat, and poaching pushing them towards extinction. The Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre is an effort to preserve and save these animals that are quickly dying out. After it was opened in 1973, with funding coming from the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre has seen almost 200 orangutans released into the wilderness.
The Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre is a center where a visitor can closely watch semi-wild orangutans, where they are being trained to return to their native habitat after being freed from captivity. In 2002, a new quarantine centre was set up outside Medan, as an additional facility with the Bohorok Orang-utan Viewing Centre.
In 1980 the Centre was taken over by the Indonesian Government. Since then it has received virtually no outside funding, and it no longer operates as a rehabilitation centre for orangutans. It survives on a portion of the permit money paid by visitors. The rangers are paid by the Government.
Since it opened in 1973 more than 200 orangutans have been released. It is wonderful when rehabilitated females conceive and give birth in the forest. It means the centre has increased the orangutan population as well as giving the infant a chance to grow up in a protected forest area.
Although the Bohorok Centre no longer operates as a rehabilitation centre, Bohorok’s staff remain responsible for approximately 35 ex-captive orangutans who are free to come and go into the surrounding forest.