Photo from The Orangutan Project
The Orangutan Project (TOP), an organization dedicated to orangutan conservation and welfare, is seeking donations for the month of March to help the Centre for Orangutan Protection, a key partner in Kalimantan, Indonesia, to protect Borneo’s displaced orangutans due to the palm oil industry, provide the rehabilitation and care they desperately need, and to urgently safeguard and protect their remaining rainforest habitat.
Berani, a male Borneo orangutan, was malnourished, dehydrated and found cramped in a small, dark crate (left); he was rescued by The Orangutan Project partners at Centre for Orangutan Protection from a Kalimantan village in October 2018, and was sent directly to the COP Borneo Rescue Centre, where he received urgent medical care and is now attending forest school rehabilitation to prepare him for eventual release into a protected habitat (right).
Kalimantan is facing a deforestation crisis and serious habitat loss is displacing critically endangered Bornean orangutans, leaving them vulnerable to starvation and the illegal wildlife trade. According to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 50% of Kalimantan’s lowland rainforest, which once covered all of the island, is now gone. Without the protection of the forest, poachers are able to readily access orangutans, and will usually kill the mother to steal the baby for the illegal wildlife pet trade.
Every hour 300 football fields of precious rainforest is being decimated across South East Asia to make way for palm oil plantations.
