Protecting Rainforests for Wild Orangutans

In addition to taking action to prevent illegal deforestation and lobbying to halt infrastructure projects which endanger forest ecosystems, we know that the long-term health of Sumatra's rainforests depends on today's children growing up with a connection to forests and feeling driven to protect them.

At one of our forest restoration sites, we've constructed a school where, alongside all the usual subjects, there is a strong focus on inspiring pupils to love nature - the forest they see on the horizon, the river they cross to get to school, and the birds that fly overhead when they play outside during break times. To facilitate this, we are building up a library of books about nature and wildlife, in Bahasa Indonesia and in English, to give the pupils access to a colourful, diverse and well-rounded approach to learning about the natural world.

Some of our long-term supporters recently visited the school and took the opportunity to deliver some new books for the nature library, and to learn some Indonesian words for animals and plants. Everyone agreed that they'd have loved their school to be like this one!

Links:

• http://www.orangutans-sos.org

Since our last report, we have been busy working hard behind the scenes to tackle the proposed Hydropower dam project which threatens the newly described Tapanuli orangutan species in Batang Toru, Sumatra.

We used your dedicated campaign donations to pay for a specialist lawyer in Medan to advise local groups on how best to apply pressure on the proposed project: for example, the lawyer has been examining the environmental impact assessment which  the Chinese company, Sinohydro, submitted in order to obtain planning permission for the project.

This may cause significant delay to the project if it can be shown that they did not fully adhere to the legal requirements.

In addition, we have been developing a global petition which Avaaz have sent out to their subscribers in the last couple of days. This had already achieved over 400,000 signatures and will be sent direct to Indonesian President Joko Widodo. He wants to be seen as “The People’s President” so there is some hope that he may succumb to pressure if there is enough of it.

Please therefore sign and share the link on the petition below. We do not have long to save this particular patch of forest with its unique newly discovered species of Tapanuli orangutan.

Thank you so much for your support for our work. Together we can make sure there is a permanent future for Sumatran Orangutans.

Links:

• Please sign petition