Attorney General Investigates Orangutan Foundation

HONOLULU -- A KITV 4 News investigation finds the nonprofit group that owns Rusti the orangutan has spent most of the money it raised for his care on failed attempts to move him to a new home.

The Attorney General's Office confirmed it has opened an inquiry to find out if the nonprofit Orangutan Foundation solicited money for Rusti, but used it elsewhere.

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office says it has not reached a formal conclusion, but KITV discovered that the foundation keeps spending money on failed attempts to move Rusti.

Rusti has been in a 1950s-era cage at Honolulu Zoo since 1997, when the California-based Orangutan Foundation rescued him from a roadside zoo in New Jersey.

He was supposed to be there only a few months, until the foundation could build a new habitat for him on the Big Island, at the Panaewa Zoo outside Hilo.

Six years later, Rusti is still in Honolulu. Animal rights activists asked the Attorney General's Office to investigate the foundation.

"They may have raised a lot of money, but I cannot see that Rusti has benefited from any of it," said Cathy Goeggel of Animal Rights Hawaii.

The nonprofit organization told the Attorney General's Office it spent tens of thousands of dollars on architects, consultants and designs for the Big Island site. They even had a groundbreaking. But construction never got under way. The cost of the project so far is nearly $89,000.

"We did everything we could to make it happen on the Big Island, but in the end it just wasn't feasible," said Birute Galdikas, president of the Orangutan Foundation. "It wasn't possible."

Galdikas said the project ran into bureaucratic problems, because it was on state land controlled by the county on the Big Island.

Next, she says the foundation spent $40,000 to build a structure for Rusti at a sanctuary in Central Florida.

But the foundation later decided it was too dangerous for him to travel that far. "Orangutans don't necessarily do well with anesthesia or with travel. Transport cages tend to be small and orangutans just don't do well in them," Galdikas said.

Since 1997, the foundation reports spending $24,000 on Rusti's food and care, as well as a transport cage.

Most of the $153,000 it spent did not directly benefit the orangutan, KITV reported.

Earlier this year, the foundation decided to move Rusti to Kualoa Ranch, spending $20,000 to build a temporary cage. But they built it without city permits, so Rusti can't move there until the permits are approved.

"I don't think that they have his best interests at heart," Goeggel said. "If they did, they wouldn't have left him for six years in that concrete and metal cage." "I don't think anybody has any complaints, including Rusti, except for people who claim they're animal rights activists," Galdikas said. "If they truly were animal rights activists, they would work with us."

The Orangutan Foundation said it plans to spend $ 250,000 on a bigger enclosure for Rusti at Kualoa, built around a tree.

The foundation's president said they've done nothing wrong, and have cooperated fully with the inquiry by the Attorney General's Office.