STAR-BULLETIN / JUNE 2001 Rusti the orangutan, who has been living at the Honolulu Zoo, will go to Florida now that plans for an orangutan sanctuary on the Big Island have fallen through.

Aloha, Rusti

The orangutan will head to Florida
as plans for a Hilo refuge collapse

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By Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com

HILO >> Rusti is going to Florida.

Plans have fallen through for a Hilo sanctuary for American-born orangutans, including Rusti at the Honolulu Zoo, officials with the Hawaii County and Orangutan Foundation International confirmed yesterday.

The collapse of plans was caused by Sept. 11 terrorism, said Gary Shapiro, vice president of the foundation in Los Angeles.

Charitable organizations have shifted priorities to aiding Sept. 11 victims, he said.

Rusti, now about 20 years old, was rescued from a prisonlike private zoo in New Jersey in 1997 and "temporarily" placed at the Honolulu Zoo.

Date after date passed for construction of a new home for him near the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo in Hilo.

Plans now are to transfer him, perhaps next month, to the Center for Orangutan and Chimpanzee Conservation in Wauchula, Fla., Shapiro said. The center is currently home to six chimpanzees and two orangutans.

Former Big Island Mayor Stephen Yamashiro always treated the Hilo facility, proposed in 1993, with caution.

The foundation finally got a building permit last year under Mayor Harry Kim. Groundbreaking was Sept. 24, right after the terrorist attacks.

"You don't get funds until you're ready. And then you had 9/11," Shapiro said.

Kim aide Andy Levin said, "They just realized they don't have the funds."

Kim offered encouragement in a Feb. 8 letter. "I hope you can still make this dream a reality," he wrote.

Shapiro said that might be possible, but it would require a major donor providing construction funds and long-term operation funds.

The foundation had another priority, Shapiro said, protecting Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesia where foundation president Birute Galdikas has worked for 30 years to protect orangutans in the wild.

Illegal logging, establishment of villages inside the park, and mob destruction of park headquarters have taken place.

In an agreement with the Indonesian government, the foundation successfully used its funds to provide local police with hazardous-duty pay, manning boats that stopped loggers from going up rivers, Shapiro said.