Malaysian orangutan hospital sparks controversy

A Malaysian orangutan sanctuary where baby apes wear nappies, sleep in cots and are cared for by nurses dressed in masks and starched uniforms has drawn the wrath of environmentalists.

At Orangutan Island in Malaysia's north, tourists snap photos as they file past large windows looking onto a facility billed as the world's only rehabilitation and preservation facility for the endangered primates.

Behind the glass, adorable baby orangutans like two-month-old Tuah lie swaddled in nursery sheets and cling to baby rattles.

"He is separated from the mother because his hands got entangled in the mother's hair and was unable to breastfeed," says the facility's chief veterinarian D. Sabapathy.

Tuah lies calmly in his cot with his eyes wide open and hands across his chest, hooked up to cables monitoring his heart beat and oxygen levels, ignoring the passing parade.

But the care lavished on the animals, which are fed every two hours by a staff of seven nurses on duty round the clock, is lost on environmentalists who say this is no way to treat wild animals facing the threat of extinction. Managers of the 35-acre island, which is part of a resort hotel development, say they aim to return the animals to their natural jungle habitat, but so far none have been released.

"It is ridiculous to have orangutans in nappies and hand-raised in a nursery. How are they going to reintroduce the primates back in the wild?" asked senior wildlife veterinarian Roy Sirimanne. Mr Sirimanne, who has worked in zoos in southeast Asia and the Middle East over the past four decades, said baby orangutans need to be with their mothers to learn survival skills.

Experts say there are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 per cent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia's eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island.

A 2007 assessment by the UN Environment Programme warned that orangutans will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current deforestation trends continue.