Orangutan Foundation

Orangutan Awareness Week, 10th – 16th November, is an annual event that creates a focus for groups or individuals to hold fundraising events and raise awareness of the threats to orangutans and their rainforest habitat.
 
This week Orangutan Foundation are highlighting the important role the orangutan’s habitat, the tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra, has in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation is the second largest cause of global warming.

Andrew Mitchell, Director of the forest conservation organisation, Global Canopy Programme and a trustee of the Orangutan Foundation says “If deforestation is the front line for forests in the war on climate change then orangutans are the ambassadors being burnt at the stake. Emissions from deforestation are equivalent to 36 million people flying from London to New York every day and unless this is halted we will lose the fight against Global Warming. The global community has one year to agree a workable mechanism for including forest emissions in the global climate deal to be agreed next year in Copenhagen. We along with our orange cousins watch with fear and hope."

London businesses are swinging into action for Orangutan Awareness Week. G-Wiz have donated one of their electric cars. The vehicle has the slogan ‘Cut Carbon emissions not our forests. Save orangutans. Support Orangutan Foundation’ and will be driven, by a person dressed as orangutan, on Friday 14th November.

Le Pain Quotidien, the sustainable and community-aware bakery and restaurant, whose stores are carbon neutral, are putting an “orangutan dish” on their menu and the manager of their flagship store on Marylebone High Street will dress as an orangutan.


The Orangutan Foundation is the world’s foremost orangutan conservation organisation, protecting orangutans by preventing the destruction and burning of their tropical forest habitat.