The Orangutan Conservancy (OC) encourages all supporters to take part in “Orangutan Caring Week,” an annual review of the crisis facing orangutans, which will be staged Nov. 8-14 at zoos, museums, universities and civic halls around the world.

“Orangutan Caring Week” was created by the Orang Utan Republik Foundation, and is designed to create a “critical mass of concerned voices” for the conservation of orangutans and their habitat. The theme for 2009 is “Planting Trees to Increase Future Habitat for the Orangutan.”  

The OC had an orangutan information and merchandise table at the Southern California Primate Research Forum, which occurred on Nov. 7 at Cal State University – Northridge (CSUN). The biannual event focuses primarily on field research, including topics about evolutionary biology, ecology, and behavior.  The CSUN topic was “New Directions in Studies of New World Monkeys.”

The OC also took part in “Orangutan Caring Week” by providing OC Shopping Guides to more than a dozen zoos to distribute to the general public as part of the information campaigns. The OC Shopping Guides identify “orangutan-friendly” items and manufacturers that do not use ingredients such as palm oil that harm the orangutan’s natural habitat.

For more information of Orangutan Caring Week, please visit the Orang Utan Republik Foundation website.

(Source: OC Staff)

The Orangutan Conservancy (OC) expanded its “orangutan-friendly” consumer program today by partnering with Chandler Farm, Inc., to promote body care products that do not contain palm oil.

Proceeds of the sales from Chandler Farm’s “Palm Oil Free Bath Collection” – which includes lotion, body butter (pictured at left), and hand and body wash – in November and December will benefit OC and its projects in Borneo and Sumatra.

Chandler Farm products can be purchased on-line through a link on the OC website or by visiting the Chandler Farm shopping site.

 “The Orangutan Conservancy is proud to be associated with a caring and conscientious organization like Chandler Farm,” said Norm Rosen, president of OC. “So often, people ask us what they can do to make a difference? How can they help? Well, here is an example whereby simply making a smart consumer choice they can not only purchase great products but also help save orangutans.”

In 2008, the OC produced an “orangutan-friendly” Shopping Guide that lists dozens of food, cleaning, and household products made without palm oil.
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With their forested home gone, orangutans are driven into oil palm plantations but the cultivated landscape is unlikely to sustain them for long.

THE sight of an orang utan feasting on oil palm fruits will certainly be the ultimate vindication for the plantation industry that is battling criticisms over its impact on the endangered species. After all, the industry has insisted that an oil palm plantation is no less rich in biological diversity than natural forests.

Hence, Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) chief executive officer Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron highlighted this fact at the two-day Orang Utan Conservation Colloquium – Developing Models for Orang Utan Conservation Within Fragmented Ecosystems in Sabah recently.

But Yusof’s suggestion that oil palm plantations are good habitats for orang utans was quickly dispelled by orang utan conservationist Dr Marc Ancrenaz, co-director of the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project (KOCP), who has researched the primate in the Kinabatangan region for the last 12 years.

Ancrenaz, who is also scientific director of non-governmental organisation Hutan, clarified that although orang utans have been found chewing on oil palm fruits, the behaviour should not be interpreted to mean that plantations are a viable ecosystem for the Asian great ape.

“Plantations alone cannot support the orang utan in the long term. The nutrients are insufficient and the animals will likely starve to death,” he noted.
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