"I Found a Baby Orangutan in a Suitcase"

Commander Bagus Santoso has worked for the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry's conservation division for 18 years, specializing in wildlife trafficking interdiction at transportation hubs across Borneo. He has personally intercepted over 200 live animals from illegal trade and has testified in over 80 criminal cases against wildlife traffickers.

The suitcase was unusual because it was moving. Most suitcases at the cargo terminal of Supadio Airport in Pontianak sit still after they come off the plane from Jakarta. This one was vibrating slightly, rhythmically, the way things do when they contain something alive. I had been working at the airport checkpoint for three years by then, and I knew what to look for: packages that are heavier than they should be, luggage that the owner claims not to know the contents of, cargo with false declarations. But I had never seen anything move.

I told my colleague to find the luggage tag and identify the owner while I went to get a knife to open it. By the time I got back, the owner—a woman in her forties, traveling on a domestic flight from Jakarta—had appeared at the cargo terminal, asking where her suitcase was. She had a look on her face that I have seen many times since: the look of someone who has been caught and knows it but is calculating whether denial might still work.

I opened the suitcase. There was a baby orangutan inside, maybe eighteen months old, wrapped in a towel that was wet with urine. The baby was curled in a fetal position, eyes wide, too weak to scream. It took me several seconds to understand what I was looking at. I have seen a lot of things in this job, but never an orangutan in a suitcase. The smell was extraordinary—fecal and ammonia, the smell of an animal that had been kept in a small space for a very long time.

The woman claimed she had found the baby on the street in Jakarta and was taking it to a 'vet.' We later found messages on her phone confirming that she had been paid 3.5 million rupiah—about $220—to transport the orangutan to a buyer in Pontianak. Three hundred and fifty thousand rupiah per kilogram, based on the baby's weight. That is the going rate for infant orangutans in the illegal pet trade. Not for their rarity, not for their intelligence, not for the fact that they take seven years to reach maturity and that their mothers spend the first decade of their lives caring for them. Just per kilogram.

We took the baby to the vet at the wildlife rescue station. She was malnourished, dehydrated, suffering from a respiratory infection from the cold air conditioning in the plane's cargo hold. The vet gave her fluids and antibiotics and told us she would probably survive. Her name, we decided, would be Damai. It means 'peace' in Indonesian. We give them names when they arrive because they deserve to be called something.

Damai spent six months in our rehabilitation program before she was transferred to the BOS Foundation's center in East Kalimantan. By the time she was transferred, she had learned to climb, to build a nest, to eat solid food. She had been weaned off formula and was eating fruit and insects. The BOS Foundation told me later that she was integrated into a social group and was doing well. That is the best outcome we can hope for: that an animal rescued from the illegal trade can be rehabilitated and, if possible, released. For orangutans, release is often difficult because their wild habitat is disappearing so fast. Many of them end up in semi-wild enclosures for the rest of their lives, cared for but never truly free.

The woman who tried to transport Damai received a sentence of one year in prison and a fine of 50 million rupiah. That is the maximum penalty under Indonesian law for illegal wildlife trafficking. One year. Fifty million rupiah is about $3,100. The illegal pet trade generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Indonesia. The penalties are not a deterrent. They are a cost of doing business.

I have a daughter who is seven years old. She asked me once what I do at work, and I told her I help animals. She asked what kind of animals, and I said, all kinds. She asked if the animals are scary. I told her no, the animals are never the scary part. The scary part is understanding that for every baby orangutan we intercept at an airport, there are dozens that make it through. That for every trafficking network we break up, three more are already operating. That we are losing the war, one suitcase at a time.

But then I think about Damai. I think about the way she looked when we opened that suitcase—small and terrified and somehow still alive. She is alive because we were at the airport that day. She is alive because someone tipped us off about the cargo. She is alive because the system worked, just this once. And I think: if the system can work once, it can work again. That is what keeps me at the checkpoint. The hope that the next time a suitcase moves, I will be there to open it.