Animal Sanctuary Trust Indonesia - ASTI

Welcome to ASTI and Giving Day for Apes 2020!

Welcome to Giving Day for Apes 2020 and thank you so much for your interest in our story! Please donate to our cause and help us to return rescued trafficked apes to their home ranges, assisting individual animals and contributing to biodiversity conservation at the same time. We can't do this without your help!

ASTI's Work With Rescued Trafficked Animals

Animal Sanctuary Trust Indonesia (ASTI) operates a multi-species rescue center in West Java, Indonesia, with a mission to take care of animals rescued from the illegal pet trade, rehabilitating them and returning them to the wild.  With a total of nine people on our staff, we generally have about 90 animals under our care, up to 20 percent of whom are gibbons and siamangs (and once in a while orangutans).

Challenges Facing Apes in Indonesia

Sadly, apes are extremely vulnerable to poaching for sale in the illegal pet trade; being so beautiful, especially when very young, they are easily sold, creating  a lucrative market for the traffickers.  

When rescued apes arrive at ASTI they are often in a traumatized state as a result of their frightening experience in the hands of the traffickers. This refers especially to the babies, most of whom would have been forcibly removed from their mothers who were almost certainly killed in the process. Animals who have already been pets for some time may be malnourished from eating inappropriate food, and weak from being held in small cages.

Taking Care of Apes at ASTI

At ASTI we provide initial rehabilitation to prepare the apes for later relocation back to their home ranges (which could be Java, Sumatra, or Kalimantan). 

This means that we take care of the animals' health and make sure they are getting a nutritious diet which resembles as closely as possible their natural diet. We also provide them  with  enclosures large enough to permit swinging and natural movement, and equipped with enrichment including swings, ropes, ladders, hammocks and tree branches. When they are ready to return to their home ranges, we make arrangements for their travels and make sure they arrive safely.

Through this work we therefore act not only on the front line receiving and taking care of trafficked apes; we also conduct the process of starting their rehabilitation and preparing them for a safe relocation to species-specific centers operated by other groups in the animals' home ranges.

In addition, we're very excited about a new project we're developing in Sumatra -- a small final rehabilitation and release facility in siamang/agile gibbon habitat -- to which we will be sending rescued siamangs and agile gibbons from our ASTI West Java center to get them back to the wild.

Some of the beautiful apes currently with ASTI are shown in our media gallery at the foot of this page.  The sooner we can prepare them to go home, the sooner we can accept more rescued animals; there are so many needing help!

Thank you so much for your help!

Thank you in advance for your support of our work with these precious animals! Your donation will help us to: 

• Take good care of rescued apes 
• Upgrade our clinic facilities 
• Upgrade our ape rehabilitation enclosures
• Create a special care facility for infant apes
• Make transport cages suitable  for the animals' journeys home 
• Relocate them from ASTI West Java to their home ranges

This is how your kind donation will be used:

$25 will cover food and medical care for one animal for one week

$100 will cover food and medical care for one animal for one month

$200 will enable us to build a transport cage for relocation of one ape back to his/her home range

$500 will enable us to build a set of transport cages for relocation of a group of three apes back to their home range

$1,000 will cover the cost of relocation of one  animal to a receiving center in his/her home range

$1,200 will enable us to build and equip a special care room for infant apes

$1,500 will cover repairs and expansion of our ape enclosures 

$2,000 will enable us to purchase small items of equipment for upgrading our clinic