SAVE THEM ALL: The red apes of Borneo and Sumatra have been having some horrible seasons lately, and populations on both islands have fallen from 50-80% in recent years, victims of habitat loss, poaching, and the pet trade. So here’s a shout-out to our friends who are working to keep them in the game: The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation aids orangutans orphaned by the conversion of the species’ rain forest habitat to palm oil plantations.
BOS also backs ecological restoration, regrowing forests in Indonesia: Watch an extraordinary TED presentation by BOS founder Dr. Willie Smits talking about his work restoring that critical habitat. At Samboja Lestari, a region impoverished economically and biologically by palm oil monoculture, Smits experimented with applications of compost and native seeds (some extracted from orangutan poop) and seedlings, rallying the local Dayak people to plant sustainable food crops alongside the rain forest species. The results have been nothing less than astonishing. For more on this project, see Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution. Learn more about the orangutan’s plight from two films, The Burning Season, and Green, an award-winning documentary that follows the fate of one orangutan whose forest falls to palm oil. The Green website offers a detailed list of actions consumers can take: Don’t buy tropical hardwoods, avoid buying paper products from Asian paper mills, and shun companies and products invested in palm oil. More helpful shopping tips can be found at the website for the Orangutan Conservancy.
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