We're off to chop some browse for the orangutans, part of their natural diet
actually involves quite a lot of vegetation and so as part of our job
here at Orana Park we need to be going out collecting fresh browse for
them every day. So we're off on our first mission now.
At the moment I'm standing in the orangutan day room
and we're planning, all going well, on giving the
orangutans access in here this afternoon, from the orangutan day room
they can see the gorillas straight across in their day room - so there's
going to be some amazing interactions going on.
We were very lucky to house the first gorillas in New Zealand and now we're just following suit again
by bringing orangs onto the South Island. So this is my day off I should probably
go home but I have no desire to I'm probably just going to spend my whole
weekend here, yeah from start to finish, I just want to embrace everything that's
coming.
In you go, that's it!
Well done!
So it was all really positive and we were really happy with how it went and so we
are hopeful that they will go outside. We do it in stages just so we don't overwhelm
them all at once with everything and we need to be able to keep a close eye on
how they're doing indoors before we put them out so this is the next step.
They go through a tonne of vegetables so this is a fridge for gorillas and orangutans
their diet is a predominantly vegetable and green space.
So this is an Auckland Zoo design that we've sent down and then the engineers
down here have made up some replicas and they work really really well, they may
not be the prettiest things, but they work really well and they serve their
purpose of keeping the orangutans feeding off the grounds, as they should be.
It's finally all come together and now is the time to let them out and give it a test!
Welcome!
Hi lady!
Good boy! Look at you!
I love my job, I'm so lucky that I'm in my dream job that
I've always wanted since I was three years old and I've always had a passion
for and a fascination for Great Apes, particularly orangutans,
super challenging and they're always throwing something new at you, you never
can predict what an individual orangutan is going to be like on any given day.
Incredible it was so amazing to see them come out straight away pretty quickly.
This is probably the biggest moment in my career waiting so long for these guys
to come and now having the opportunity to not work with just the orangs but
the Auckland team as well it's incredible and it's hopefully gonna be a wonderful
collaboration of teamwork.
Oh Charlie you're making me super happy
Good boy!
I'm so so happy this is perfect you know we've seen all along they're adaptable and
they'll be fine but this just really proves it they're just so comfortable.
The new South-east Asian precinct where our orangutans are going to go back to at
Auckland Zoo is going to be amazing. It's something that I've waited my
entire career for, everything about the new enclosure is to encourage that
arboreal nature and their arboreal lifestyle. It's just going to be
incredible so I'm really excited, two years can't go quickly enough, ultimately
we're doing all this because orangutans are in a pretty dire situation in the
wild in both Sumatra and Borneo and the greatest threat to orangutans
is palm oil and so the whole reason why we have them at the zoo is to
tell people about this and to connect people with them and encourage them to
take action so that this, we can turn this around, because there is still some time.