The Orangutan Conservancy was pleased to take part at the Orangutan Husbandry SSP Workshop here in Los Angeles at the zoo.
Amongst a wide-ranging host of topics, there were some informative talks about palm oil, and I was especially impressed with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s Dina Bredhahl’s presentation and her comments on the need for more zoos to become part of RSPO. Makes great sense to me. As more NGOs, conservation orgs and zoos join, there will be better checks and balances as these eco-minded groups wield more influence. Currently RSPO’s membership is dominated by growers and manufacturers.
On Monday and Tuesday, terrific presentations on a number of topics were given by Dr. Graham Banes, Dr. Roberto Delgado Jr., and OC’s own Dr. Raffaella Commitante (pictured above).
Wednesday’s panels and talks activities were just getting started at presstime. Amongst those sceheduled were talks by Angie Selzer of the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, Dr. Meredith Bastian of the Philadelphia Zoo and Hidetoshi Kurotori all the way from the Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo
Along with learning much from a plethora of orangutan experts, the Orangutan Conservancy was pleased to be able to sponsor the hospitality room at the workshop.
You can read a wonderful first-hand “from the Forest”essay that Dr. Delgado wrote for the OC website here.
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Besides Japanese visitors to the Orangutan SSP meeting in Los Angeles there were a couple from New Zealand and a couple from Sweden. The ladies from Sweden bought 10 of our “Save the Orangutan” bracelets to bring back to their friends.