The Orangutan Conservancy had the great pleasure of extending Earth Day into a veritable Earth Week as we attended two separate events this past week to spread the world about orangutans and their rainforest home.
Having the opportunity to attend live events and explain more about orangutans is one of the things that OC always strives to do here in the USA, and we’re able to do that more often with our colleagues from the California Orangutan Alliance who joined us at the two events at the JPL/NASA Earth Day Fair in Pasadena and the next day at California State University Northridge for their “Earth Fair”. Here’s some footage from the CSUN event and you can see some JPL footage on our Facebook page too.
One thing is for sure, no matter where the venue, we’re seeing an increase in public awareness to the orangutan’s plight. A growing number of people are now aware of the main threat to orangutans – palm oil – and are making educated, sustainable choices when they shop, and more and more companies are finally hearing the message. Just this past week McDonald’s pledged to eliminate deforestation from its entire supply chain, and that occurred because of increasing public pressure on the fast food giant.
As public pressure to better protect orangutans increases so too will the numbers of these great apes living free in the wild. That’s why we encourage our supporters and all that care about orangutans to use social media to let others know what is happening to our forest friends in Indonesia and what they can do at home to make a lasting difference for orangutans.
The threats of deforestation, palm oil, poaching and the illegal pet trade that orangutans face certainly haven’t diminished, but the response from a more demanding public is now showing real results.
We look forward to seeing many of you at future events in and around California.
