Dr Karmele Llano Sánchez, BVSc, MSc
Program Director, Yayasan IAR Indonesia
Dr Karmele Llano Sánchez is Program Director of International Animal Rescue’s projects in Indonesia. These currently involve two main areas of activity: a Primate Project in Bogor, Java which focuses on the rescue and rehabilitation of endangered slow lorises and macaques, and an Orangutan Project in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, which rescues and rehabilitates orangutans that have been kept illegally as pets, or left stranded and starving after their home in the forest has been destroyed.
After studying Veterinary Medicine first in Spain, then in Australia, Karmele traveled to Indonesia in 2003 to volunteer at a number of wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centers. During this time she got to know a team of Indonesian people who shared her passion for conservation and animal welfare and together they established an Indonesian NGO. However, not long after this, in 2007, IAR Chief Executive Alan Knight OBE, approached Karmele with an offer of funding to set up and run the first rescue and rehabilitation centre for slow lorises and macaques in Bogor, Java. It was in Java that Karmele got the prominent scar on her forehead, while trying to sedate a gibbon that was running wild and scared in a public market.
In 2009, Karmele answered a call for help to treat an orangutan chained up as a pet in Pontianak, West Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo.) JoJo was living in a shocking state of squalor and neglect and it was Karmele’s determination to help him that led to IAR setting up the first rescue and rehabilitation centre for orangutans in Ketapang, West Kalimantan province.
The facility is currently home to more than 100 orangutans of all ages, shapes and sizes. The majority of these are undergoing a lengthy rehabilitation process in order to be returned to their rightful home in the forest. Karmele leads a large team of veterinarians, scientists, primatologists and animal carers, as well as many administrative and support staff who all play a vital role in the smooth running of the centers in Ciapus and Ketapang.
The extraordinary passion and dedication that Karmele Llano Sánchez brings to her work is clearly visible in her public presentations and media appearances. She has been interviewed by international TV broadcasters including CNN, the BBC and National Geographic, as well as being quoted in global print and online media such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Vice News, The UK’s Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Guardian newspapers, to name but a few.
The aspects of her work that Karmele likes most are the contact with the animals and the medicinal side of her work, when she can come up with a diagnosis and an effective treatment which can cure and save an animal, or when she and her team are able to rescue an orangutan that otherwise would suffer and die. Karmele is married to a local man, Argitoe Ranting, who leads IAR’s Human-Orangutan Conflict Team in Ketapang.
