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PROJECT 1
ORANGUTAN CARE CENTRE AND QUARANTINE FACILITY
The Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine (OCCQ) facility was established in 1998, by Dr Birute Galdikas, founder of the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), and the famous Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting National Park. The Centre was initially designed to accommodate less than 100 orangutans who were confiscated from private individuals or rescued from palm oil plantations. However, due to the devastating forest fires of 1996/97, the Centre was soon flooded with many more orphans than they had anticipated.
It is a sad fact that over the past years, the numbers have continued to grow and the Centre now cares for more than 330 orphans, ranging in age from under a year to 15 years. The orangutans get excellent medical care from the permanently employed vets, and are encouraged on their way to be rehabilitated for the wild by the more than 150 local staff at the Centre.
It is at this Centre, that I was privileged to spend a month in 2008 and again in 2010, where I helped out at the nursery pondok, caring for some 30 infant orangutans. These life-changing experiences working with such amazing creatures, were instrumental in my setting up Orangutan Aid in Hong Kong in order to try and do something to help. Naturally the Centre is very close to my heart and is therefore the focus of our first project.
As you can imagine, the monthly running costs for the Centre are huge and OFI receives no government funding or large grants to help with the operating costs. They rely solely on donations and their own fundraising efforts. Not only do they need funds just to keep operating, but funds are needed to be able to adequately house the increasing numbers of Orangutans. In 2010, Orangutan Aid was able to donate a small amount of money to be used at the nursery pondok (see blog "How your donations were spent") and also put money towards building a new enclosure for Hocky, one of the disabled young orangutans. We would like to increase our financial support for the Centre and will continue to focus on this in our current fund-raising efforts.
All the images below were taken at the OCCQ by photographer Jackie Peers. The Care Centre is located in the village of Pasir Panjang near the town of Pangkalanbun in Central Kalimantan.
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| "Once forested land" |
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'BUY A FOREST' CAMPAIGN
The greatest danger facing orangutans in the wild is the loss of their habitat due to deforestation. Millions of hectares of virgin rainforest in Borneo and Sumatra, are being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations.
This is disasterous for the survival of the few remaining orangutan populations, and puts ever-increasing pressure on the existing rehabilitation and care centres, as more and more orphaned and displaced orangutans are brought to them. These centres are now faced with a huge problem - where to find suitable, protected forest where those already rehabilitated orangutans can be returned to the wild.
One of the ways forward, is for responsible organisations to purchase forested land which they will be able to protect for future years, when the current infants they are caring for will be ready to be released back into the forest. The Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) have set themselves a goal to purchase 1000 hectares of forest , near the Care Centre which it runs in Pangkalanbun, Central Kalimantan. So far they have been able to purchase 300 hectares so they still have a very long way to go, Orangutan Aid would like to try and help them reach their goal, and have therefore launched their "Buy a Forest" campaign.
We are asking scholars, university students, caring individuals, businesses, in fact any organisation or group of people, with an interest in saving the environment for future generations, to become involved.
HERE'S HOW!
It costs the OFI in the region of HK$5000 to buy one hectare of land. We have designed a banner (pictured on this page), which we will give to each group/individual who registers their desire to help. Each banner will be valued at HK$5000 and it will be up to you to come up with innovative and fun ideas to raise this amount of money using the banner. Each tree has 100 leaves or spaces which you could for example, sell for HK$50 each, or hold a raffle using the banner, or put up a banner at your Christmas function or school functions. We will run the campaign until the end of April 2011 and there is no limit to the number of banners you can apply for. Our aim is to reach 50, but it would be wonderful if we could exceed that.
If you are interested in joining our campaign and registering for a banner, please contact us on info@orangutanaid.com or click on the PDF below and complete the registration form.
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KALIMANTAN FOREST PURCHASE
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The above certificate from the Orangutan Foundation International, represents our first donation of US$2000 towards the purchase of 20 acres of land in the Rawa Kuno Forest Legacy. We are delighted to have been able to contribute towards this, and further funds raised through our "Buy A Forest" campaign will be donated towards buying more of this land. For a satellite image of the actual location and the story of the land acquisition, please click on the link below.
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