Between 1999 and 2015, more than half of Borneo’s orangutan population disappeared. Nearly 150,000 of them vanished (National Geographic, 2017) If we continue to unknowingly support the destruction of their habitats, researchers predict they will be extinct by 2040.

The main cause of their diminishing numbers is... Palm oil. Found in 50% of all household and food products sold in the West, palm oil is an ingredient in shampoo, toothpaste, detergent, frozen microwave dinners, cookies, peanut butter, lotion, makeup and much more!

In the last 20 years, over 3.5 million hectares of Indonesian and Malaysian forest have been destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations (The Oragnutan Project UK, 2016) It has become one of these countries’ main form of income and the unsustainable deforestation and logging for palm oil plantations has caused 80% of orangutan habitat to disappear in the last 20 years.

Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in the Malaysian Sabah District of North Borneo was founded to rehabilitate orphan orangutans whose mothers have been starved as a result of fleeing to unsuitable habitats or by the mass burning of the forests they were living in.

Sharing 97% of our DNA, orangutan babies are just as helpless as as human babies - In the wild orangutan babies stay with their mothers for up to six years while they are taught the skills they need to survive in the forest, the most important of which is climbing. Sepilok sanctuary uses a buddy system to pair younger oprhans with a rescued orangutan that is further along their rehabilitation journey. The sanctuary aims to fully rehabilitate the orphans so that they can be released back into the wild, where they belong!

Next month, Sophie and I are spending four weeks volunteering at the sanctuary and are very excited to meet our adopted orangutan- Beryl!! (pictured) We have contacted the Centre in Sepilok to see whether there were any items that we could take with us that the sanctuary is in need of. Instead of donating practical items, the sanctuary explained that they are currently in need of funds to enable the transport of one of their rehabilitated orangutans back into the wild! (it is a long journey to an area of forest which is deemed safe and to make sure they don’t try to make their way back to the reserve)

Please help us to raise as much as we can for this amazing cause and please spend that little bit extra when doing your shopping next time, making sure that what you are buying contains sustainably-sourced palm oil.

Thank You!

Kath & Soph xx