Hornbill Release Program

Due to the increase of illegally traded hornbills in the last few years, rescue centers in Indonesia are confronted with a growing number of hornbills under their care. Although the number of hornbills in rescue centers was increasing, also due to internet sales, like on Facebook,  there were no professional release projects for hornbills in Indonesia.

To deal with the growing population in rescue centers and to help the declining wild hornbill population in Indonesia, and because there are no specialized rehabilitation and release programs for hornbills, we decided to initiate in 2018 the first rehabilitation & release program for hornbills in Indonesia. A very difficult and challenging program due to the lack of experience in hornbill releases in Indonesia we had to start from scratch. The release of animals back to their natural habitat is always difficult, but the fact that hornbills are so smart and quickly habituated toward humans makes it even more complicated to release these birds.

We have been able to take important steps in the Hornbill program over the past years. Our focus was initially to make sure the welfare of the hornbills would increase, improving the rehabilitation process to avoid the habituation of the birds. We have built spacious rehabilitation- pre-release enclosures, and the hornbill diet was optimized to an as much as possible natural diet to prepare them as well as possible for survival in the wild. Long-term behavioral observations were conducted to assess whether the hornbills were ready for release, but also for adjustments of the rehabilitation process. After that, the next step was the planning of the actual release of the hornbills.

A multiple-year step-by-step release strategy has been developed in 2021, including an awareness program, management of the release area, training of hornbill guardians, translocation, habituation, release, and monitoring will guide us step by step through the whole process.  In November 2022 the first 4 hornbills were released. Although this release hasn’t been fully successful, we learned a lot from this release and have been able to make improvements in the rehabilitation and for future releases.

To make this program as successful and as professional as possible we have worked together with several generous sponsors and got advice from multiple partners in this project like Ouwehands Zoo Foundation

This program is very difficult and challenging program due to the lack of experience in hornbill releases in Indonesia. Cikananga is the only center focusing on rehabilitation and releases on hornbills in Indonesia, therefore we had to start this program from scratch. Building on the experience and with new insights we have made adjustments to our past planning.

The plan for 2024 is to increase our education & awareness activities in the release area, more involvement of local stakeholders, studies on the wild hornbill population, planting of native fruit trees and making improvements in the rehabilitation process of the hornbills in our care.

If you want to learn more about this program or consider supporting a hands-on conservation program for Hornbills, please contact us as there is much to tell and plans are moving forward.