The Kukang Rescue Program

Kukang is the Indonesian name for the protected prosimian, slow loris (Nycticebus coucang). The aim of the program is to protect this species in Indonesia, with a focus on the North Sumatra province, where this species occurs naturally. These protected and endangered prosimians are threatened mostly by illegal trade, while being sold mainly as domestic "pets". The Kukang Rescue Program is managed by a group of Czechs in Indonesia together with Indonesians.

Purpose and objectives of the program
The program aims at weakening the illegal trade in protected and endangered slow loris in the North Sumatra by working with Indonesian authorities, enabling the effective enforcement of the laws and also by educational activities.

The Kukang Rescue Program has four main objectives:
1. Cooperation with local government agencies to enforce laws protecting slow lorises.
2. Operation of a rescue and rehabilitation centre for confiscated slow lorises.
3. Raising awareness about the illegal trade in animals and protection of slow lorises.
4. Building an Indonesian team which will implement most of the conservation activities associated with slow lorises.

Team members in Indonesia are trying to minimize the physical and psychological suffering of individuals in absolutely unsuitable conditions at animal markets. The program shall hinder activities of hunters and smugglers freely selling slow loris; raise awareness about slow loris protection among the general public; and ensure an appropriate rehabilitation of animals in order to successfully return these prosimians back into the wild.

Working in Sumatra
In 2015 the Czech-Indonesian team in Sumatra completed the first part of the rescue and rehabilitation centre, which is now ready to welcome the first slow lorises confiscated from black markets. Construction of such a place was the first, vital goal of the program, since there has not been such facility available across the entire Sumatra until now, which is one of the reasons why seizures of slow lorises occur only very rarely and as a saying goes, "where there is no accuser, there is no judge". This is now changing and slow lorises will be confiscated from dealers and smugglers but also private breeders by the Indonesian authorities and police in collaboration with team members of The Kukang Rescue Program.

We plan to build an educational area on the land of our rehabilitation centre, where there will be a space for seminars and demonstrations of animals that have previously been "taken care" of by hunters and are therefore no longer able to return into the wild. It happens often that slow lorises, which are intended for sale to domestic dealers, have their teeth ripped out, so they cannot bite their new owners and would be "more suitable pets". Stressed animals are often subjected to subsequent infections. The goal of the education is to show that wild animals are not pets. Another task of the Czech-Indonesian team is an exploration of the illegal trade with slow lorises and raising the awareness among the local population who do buy slow lorises. Currently, there are awareness raising activities targeted at schools and local farmers going on.
You can read more about our work in Sumatra in periodic reports.

I Am Not Your Toy campaign!
This campaign aims to stop the viral popularity rise of slow lorises as pets. This happens most often through sharing "cute" videos on YouTube and social networks. Professor Anna Nekaris has proved that these videos have a direct, negative impact on the illegal trade in slow lorises more info here and here. The goal of the campaign "I Am Not Your Toy!" is to inform people about the background of these videos. The first step of this campaign was to create a short video which you can now watch on YouTube. On our website, we have accompanied this video with extensive information explaining the ways that each one of us can act if we encounter the sharing of "cute" videos etc. The campaign will also employ other modern tools like animations, drawings, videos etc.
Even you now have the opportunity to help us spread this message further, to cooperate with us and to use increasingly popular social networks and websites to raise awareness about animal conservation. Please, share this video or the entire campaign on your social networks and websites.
Campaign video " I Am Not Your Toy!":

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Link of the campaign "I Am Not Your Toy!" or Facebook of the campaign .
For more detailed information about the campaign, feel free to contact Johana Rotterová at her e-mail address [email protected].

Illegal trade in animals in Indonesia
Illegal trade in animals is a big problem in Indonesia. Targeted deforestation, mainly due to oil palm, opens remote and previously inaccessible forest areas from which the last remnants of the populations of wild animals disappear under the hands of poachers. Most of the illegal trade takes place "behind closed doors"; remembering that reported seizures may represent as little as 10% of the total illegal trade (INTERPOL, ‘rule of thumb”) we gain an insight into the impact this may have on the survival of these fascinating animals that still inhabit tropical rainforests around the world.

To get an idea, here are few examples from the recent past:

1. 1. 2015 "Poachers have more rare turtles on the truck, than scientists even thought that there are in the wild" - the seizure of 4,000 critically endangered Philippine turtles exceeds by 1000 the number of individuals that biologists have estimated that survives in wild.
2. 1. 2015 "Five tons of frozen pangolins, 77 kg of pangolin scales and 96 alive pangolins were seized in Medan, Sumatra" - package containing critically endangered pangolins and their body parts were intended for Chinese trade with traditional medicine and its estimated value climbed to 1.8 million US dollars.
3. 1. 2013 “238 slow lorises were seized on the way from Sumatra to Java animal market"- this massive consignment of slow lorises in a critical state of health proves that these protected and endangered creatures are still one of the most sold primates in Indonesia.
      One of the main reasons, why this illegal trade in animals is growing, is the insufficient enforcement of laws to protect animals. The aforementioned slow lorises and enforcement of laws to protect animals is an area on which we focus in The Kukang Rescue Program.

The Greater slow loris (Nycticebus coucang)
The Greater slow loris lives on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, in Malaysia, Thailand and in Singapore. It has an excellent sight and hunts exclusively at night. Slow lorises can see only black and white, which is the result of adapting to life in the dark. The reflection of the light from their eyes is visible at night for several hundred meters, making their eyes look as if they are shining. They reach a height of about 30 cm and weight over half a kilogram. Coloring of their facial features creates a typical slow loris mask that differs according to the species and thanks to which we can recognize an individual animal throughout its life.
They eat vegetable resin, invertebrate animals and smaller vertebrates and can also eat toxic fruits of different plants. Their glands produce a yellowish secretion containing a toxin. Slow lorises are the only poisonous primates in the world.

Partners of The Kukang Rescue Program
Field workers from two partner zoos of The Kukang Rescue Program – the Ostrava Zoo (Frantisek Pribrsky) and the Olomouc Zoo (Lucie Cizmarova) - stay most of the year in Sumatra and coordinate the program on the spot. The Ostrava and Olomouc Zoos are the main partners and, together with the Liberec Zoo which is another partner organization of The Kukang Rescue Program, contribute to a unified strategy of modern zoos, whose philosophy is the conservation of species in situ, i.e. in the area of their natural occurrence.

For more information about the program, visit the program's website www.kukang.org or Facebook page www.facebook.com/project.kukang.