orangutans, ecotourism, and hypocrisy

after seeing the orangutans in borneo, i was feeling very stuck in java. so, after some panicking and ranting and 8 hours in a cafe, i booked a flight to sumatra and left the next morning. i arrived in bukit lawang, which is a surreal strip of ecolodges and tourist shops on a river by the jungle designed as a base camp for jungle trekking to see the orangutans. i treated myself to a nice room with a beautiful view and saw an orangutan in the jungle from my balcony on the second day. spirits were high. 

a lovely new friend asked if i wanted to go to see a cobra at the house of a guy who does wildlife rehabilitation, so i hopped on the back of a motorcycle and went. the person i met was an extremely passionate wildlife activist who made me rethink how i should be spending my time in bukit lawang. i decided that instead of going on a jungle trek, i would help him with grant-writing work. after some connection issues and conversations back at the ecolodge, i decided that i would go on the jungle trek after all, and then help him with the grants afterwards. so, i headed on the jungle trek accompanied by a family from france and a pair of siblings from austria.

i am not going to say that i didn't have fun on my trek because i did. we played games, exchanged slang in our respective languages, swam in a waterfall, and ate a ton of fresh fruit. that being said: i was so upset by the interactions with the orangutans. the whole thing obviously prioritized my experience over the wellbeing of the animals. a baby bit my companion on the first day. orangutans were constantly being given fruit whether to lure them away from tourists or to lure them towards tourists for better photo ops. we met an orangutan who used to be a pet and she grabbed my hand and led me to sit with her, which we were warned might happen; they sang i wanna hold your hand and told us not to be afraid. was it super cool to hold hands with an orangutan? obviously. would i trade this experience for the guarantee that she would stop interacting with tourists? obviously. humans can easily transmit diseases to apes and there wasn't even a background check to make sure this wouldn't happen, which would have been the bare minimum to make this experience more ethical. i was so upset with myself for having gone on the trek, and maybe even more upset with myself for enjoying it. even worse was i could see the babies of thse individuals learning the behaviour being modeled by their parents, so these kinds of interactions will be perpetuated.

but feeling upset doesn't change anything. i am feeling reinvigorated to go help my wildlife rehabilitation contact. i am getting in touch with WWF indonesia. i am angry and that anger is important. i feel guilty and naive, but those things are not going to get in the way of my advocacy.

what complicates the issue is the question of ecotourism's impact on conservation. if the orangutans keep attracting tourists, then the jungle continues to be protected. one of the french people i was on trek with suggested that maybe the interactions with the semi-wild orangutans were acting as a buffer so that the fully wild orangutans could live in peace. i agonized over the same issue in tanzania. but there has to be a better way than this. these orangutans are acting and being treated like circus animals. it's not right.