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Orangutan Foundation protects habitat

I write to add to the information in Hazel Smith’s letter (Herald, Oct. 7) about the connection between palm oil and orangutans, and to suggest another way to help them in addition to avoiding palm oil. The orangutans live in tropical forest habitat in Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sumatra, Indonesia.

As the forest is being rapidly destroyed by illegal logging, mining, poaching and clearing for palm oil plantations, orangutan habitat is lost, and with it, the natural food source for the orangutans and other wildlife. Many orangutans are killed in the process, and others have no place to live.

The palms that replace the forest provide no food for the orangutans and they cannot survive. Orangutan Foundation International, www.orangutan.org, works to protect and conserve orangutan habitat, as well as to support the study of orangutans, under the leadership of Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, who has lived with and studied orangutans for more than 40 years. Dr. Galdikas has also established the Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine to care for orphaned young orangutans and to prepare them to be released in the wild. But the wild must be preserved for that to happen.

There are currently more than 300 young orangutans at the Care Center. You can help the orangutans by contributing to the Orangutan Foundation and furthering the work of Dr. Galdikas (as well as by avoiding palm oil).

Heather Mullett

Hesperus



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