The Ropes
Rescuers in Central Kalimantan cut an orangutan named Gadis out of a suspected boar snare. Her baby, Garis, was still with her. Reports disagree on whether he is nine months or ten.
Gadis was snared for a pig. Garis was still on her.
Early Friday 23 October, in Kandan Village, Kotawaringin Timur, on the Indonesian part of Borneo, a joint team found a female orangutan with rope in her flesh and a baby still holding on.
Her name is Gadis. The police account, carried by Kompas, put her at 25 years old and 30.5 kilograms. The baby is Garis. AFP, in reports published 25 and 26 October, said he is 10 months. Kompas said about nine. Both figures are in print. We do not have a third.
Muriansyah, a local conservation official, told AFP the ropes were on her upper right arm and her lower left arm, and that they had torn deep. He said the set looked like a wild-boar snare. Kompas, citing the police, described snare injuries around both wrists. The two descriptions are the same scene told by two desks. They are not identical.
Police, the Central Kalimantan natural-resources agency, a community group, Animal Rescue Sampit, and the Orangutan Foundation International got them out of a landscape that is also on fire. Both were taken to the OFI clinic near Pangkalan Bun. Garis was checked for smoke as well as for injury.
On Saturday, two other orangutans were released in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, after a separate rescue from an oil-palm plantation. That is a different pair. It is not Gadis.
Snare hunting for boar is legal in parts of Indonesia as pest control outside protected forest. It is illegal inside parks. Officials have warned for years that a snare set for a pig does not know the difference.
WWF's figure, as AFP carried it, is about 120,000 orangutans left in Borneo and Sumatra, about half the number of a century ago. That number is not this rescue. A summer tally of animals pulled from fires, by a different organisation, is not this rescue either.
The cold open is the ropes and the baby. The century-scale decline comes second. The disagreement over nine months or ten comes last.
Key Facts
- Found early 23 October 2026, Kandan Village, Kotawaringin Timur, Central Kalimantan
- Gadis, about 25, 30.5 kilograms in the police account
- Garis, about 9 months (Kompas) or 10 months (AFP)
- Ropes in the upper right arm and lower left arm; wounds described as deep
- Clinic: Orangutan Foundation International, near Pangkalan Bun
- Boar snares legal outside protected forest, illegal inside parks
- AFP via The Star and the Manila Times, 25–26 October 2026; Kompas, 23 October 2026
Why This Matters
Most conservation news arrives as a population. This one arrives as a name, a weight, and a baby who was evacuated with her. The snare was not set for an orangutan. That is the policy, sitting in a village, with the law already written and the rope still in the arm.
What We Don't Know Yet
Whether Garis is nine months or ten. Whether Gadis can go back, and to which forest. The 120,000 figure is WWF via AFP, not a census from this week. Fire smoke in the same province is context, not a measurement of what Garis inhaled. One clinic admission is not a recovery of the species.