Orangutan's move to new home hits snag
By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer
Rusti, the orangutan, has one more hurdle to clear before his extended visit at the Honolulu Zoo draws to a close: clearance from the Board of Agriculture to change the address on his permit.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Rusti's permit allows him to live only at the zoo and will have to be amended before he can move to Kualoa Ranch, where a temporary enclosure is under construction. The Orangutan Foundation International said over the next few years it expects to build a state-of-the-art orangutan sanctuary at the ranch to house Rusti and other orangutans.
A permit that allows Rusti the orangutan to live only at the Honolulu Zoo must be amended before he can be moved to Kualoa Ranch.
The Department of Agriculture's advisory committee on plants and animals was one vote shy of being able to recommend that Rusti be moved to Kualoa, with one member concerned about the care the orangutan would receive at the Windward facility. Three committee members were absent and member Ken Redman, the zoo director, recused himself from the vote.
At a City Council committee meeting on Tuesday, animal rights activist Cathy Goeggel described the new enclosure as a concrete and metal cube even smaller than Rusti's cage at the zoo. She told committee members that the animal should not be released to a "nonaccredited roadside zoo."
Lyle Wong, the Agriculture Department's Plant Industry Administrator, said Goeggel also expressed similar concerns before the advisory committee on plants and animals. He added, however, that Kualoa Ranch indicated that the area is staffed seven days a week and that the orangutan foundation is willing to put a caretakers' house there.
Wong, the committee chairman, said that although the committee can't make a full recommendation, they will still report to the board that they took a vote to recommend approving the permit amendment and reviewing it in six months or a year to make sure all the appropriate measures are in place. If not, the committee would advise the board to rescind the permit.
Gary Shapiro, vice president of the orangutan foundation, said there will be no shortage of caretakers for Rusti. "We have all kinds of people who want to go out there." He said Rusti's caretakers at the zoo have indicated that they would like to continue spending time with the orangutan.
And while Rusti's initial enclosure is "obviously too small," Shapiro said it meets the minimum federal requirements. He added that the foundation plans to build him another temporary enclosure large enough to hold three trees while Rusti waits for the open-air sanctuary.
The 23-year-old orangutan knows about waiting.
Rusti arrived in Honolulu in 1997 for what was expected to be a few months stay. The orangutan, who had been abused and abandoned by his captive mother, was raised by human foster parents until he was sold to a private roadside zoo on the East Coast. The orangutan foundation took control of him when the zoo closed and had planned for him to be the first resident of a orangutan sanctuary on the Big Island.
However, the sanctuary never materialized and Rusti has been a semipermanent occupant in a 1950s cage the zoo wants to raze and turn into a lorikeet aviary.
The orangutan foundation announced last year that Rusti would be moved to the Center for Orangutan and Chimpanzee Conservation Center in Florida. But Shapiro said it would be better to keep Rusti in Hawai'i so the orangutan won't have to undergo the trauma of being knocked out, flown, tested for tuberculosis or quarantined.
Wong said, "There are some concerns that if you had prepared it for a trip to Florida it would be at substantial risk," noting that Rusti reacted badly the last time he was tranquilized.
However, if the permit amendment is denied, Wong expects Rusti will probably end up being shipped to Florida anyway.
