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Orangutan Caring Week 10th - 16th November 2019

It's Orangutan Caring Week, over this week we will be posting on our Social Media to show how you can help give this beautiful species a second chance at a happy future.

12/11/2019

Raising awareness

You may have seen the devastating images showing the destruction of the rainforest in Borneo recently, as a lone orangutan tries to fight off the bulldozer that has destroyed its home.

This heartbreaking footage shows just how much the critically endangered orangutan needs our help more than ever.

On Day One, it's raising awareness! Any time you speak to your friends, family or work colleagues about orangutans you are helping to spread the word about their plight. The more people know about the problems facing orangutans, the better their chance of survival.

Orangutan mother holding her child as it climbs above her.

Baby orangutans simply cannot survive without their mothers and when deforestation, agriculture or unscrupulous poachers take away the only parent they have, these babies face almost certain peril.

This is where the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre comes in and the nursery carers who rescue and care for these babies are absolutely vital to ensure they survive their often traumatic ordeals. It can take 8 years for an orphan to learn all the skills they need to survive in the wild but with so few left, each and every baby rescued is precious.

Large female orangutan.

With continued habitat destruction and numbers of wild populations dwindling, rehabilitated orangutans constitute a growing proportion of the world’s remaining orangutans. This makes the work of Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre and OAUK even more vital. Where populations are low, reintroductions of successfully rehabilitated orangutan of reproductive age can increase vastly depleted numbers as well as helping to dramatically widen the gene pool. Successful rehabilitation of injured, orphaned or displaced orangutan is therefore absolutely essential to the continuation of the species.

So get involved this Orangutan Caring Week and help raise awareness and vital funds for our amazing cousins.

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