Help save the orangutans

Orangutans are one of our closest cousins. These beautiful creatures share 97 per cent of our DNA but are rapidly heading towards extinction due to the destruction of their natural rainforest habitat in South East Asia.

In 2009 natural skincare brand Trilogy launched an ongoing campaign to help endangered orangutans. The campaign has received enormous public support raising $32,000* to date for the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation – the world’s largest orangutan rescue sanctuary.

This year Trilogy is running a digital campaign. From 1 October 2011, simply pledge your name on the Trilogy website www.trilogyproducts.com and spread the word to family and friends. Trilogy will then donate $1.00* for each pledge received to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. It’s that easy.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Visit www.trilogyproducts.com and follow the orangutan.

2. Pledge your name and Trilogy will donate $1.00* to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

3. Spread the word to family and friends. Trilogy will donate $1.00* for every person who pledges.

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation was founded in 1991 by forest ecologist Dr. Willie Smits to focus on the conservation of endangered Bornean orangutans and their habitat. BOS actively rescues and rehabilitates wild orangutans from oil plantations and releases them into wild, protected rainforest habitats in East and Central Kalimantan. With almost 1000 orangutans in its care and employing between six hundred and a thousand people at a hundred sites, BOS is the largest primate conservation sanctuary in the world.

Trilogy’s donations specifically assist the Nyaru Menteng site founded and run by Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

The total number of Bornean orangutans is estimated to be less than 14 percent of what it was in the recent past (from around 10,000 years ago until the middle of the twentieth century) and this sharp decline has occurred mostly over the past few decades due to human activities and development. The orangutan’s habitat is so much reduced that they are now only to be found in pockets of remaining rainforest. It is expected that in 10 to 30 years orangutans will be extinct if there is no serious effort to overcome the threats that they are facing.

Orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre: Nyaru Menteng

Nyaru Menteng is an orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre in Central Kalimantan founded in 1999 by Lone Drøscher to deal with the swelling numbers of orphaned orangutans in this region. The sanctuary was designed to hold up to 100 orphaned orangutans while they go through rehabilitation. In addition to quarantine cages, medical clinic, and nursery, the sanctuary had a large area of forest in which orangutans can learn the skills needed to live in the wild. Nyaru Menteng has quickly became the largest primate rescue project in the world, with nearly 700 orphaned and displaced orangutans
in its care at the present.

Many of these orangutans are only weeks old when they arrive, and all of them are psychologically traumatised. The sanctuary not only saves the mostly orphaned baby orangutans from the local farmers and illegal pet-traders, but has developed a process for their gradual re-introduction to the remaining Borneo rainforest.

For further information visit: www.savetheorangutan.org