We have been aware that humans hunt and slaughter innocent animals. For their skin, horns, meat, and even for no reason at all. Even worse, humans would as well wipe out huge areas of their habitat leaving hundreds homeless to die. But for the orangutans, who was extremely close to extinction, everything changed.
Orangutans lived all over South East Asia before they were victims of extinction.
Their home was covered of vast areas of tropical rain forest. The orangutans had freedom to move freely, bringing life and diversity to this valuable Earth resource. In today’s world, because of forest destruction a highly-increasing human population, the used-to-be orangutan’s only home, completely reduced to small isolated patches. What replaced this once wild, perfect land were cities full of cities, villages with agricultural areas and palm oil plantations. Orangutans were victims of forest destruction, fires and hunting. Because of this, from 30-40,000 orangutans predicted to be living today, 5,000 orangutans are killed or die every year.Lone Droscher-Neilsen was the woman who gave her up her life in Denmark to settle down in Borneo after she was moved by the traumas experienced by these creature. It was like love at first sight. Lone’s existence has never been the same. She has devoted her last 17 years of her life making certain that orangutans don’t hit extinction. She has founded and managed Nyaru Menteng Sanctuary and heads the rescue operations to accumulate orangutans that would have had no possibility of living.
Lone was a replacement mother to orangutans. She orphaned the babies and adults and took full care of them. Her whole life changed when her journey began in her early thirties. She volunteered at an orangutan center in Borneo. It was the very first time in her life she came into close contact with an orangutan. And since then, she knew she wanted to make a change.
In November 1999, Lone Neilsen opened her own rehabilitation and rescue centre for
orangutans in Nyaru Menteng. For a very successful ten years, Lone fought for the survival of the orangutans. It was a difficult rising battle in the beginning, but Lone refused to give up, and in the end, it paid off. She gave her word to them that she will never stop fighting to save them. Beings today do not clearly see what such beautiful animals we have in the world. It is truly remarkable how one human being can make the disasters from the past fade. Lone without doubt committed herself to changing the lives of the orangutans.________________________________________________________________________________
Refrences:
"Save The Orangutan" - http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/
"EcoBites" - http://ecobites.com/eco-news-articles/nature-and-environment/340-save-the-orangutans
Blogs I Commented On:
"Kaitlin's bio blog" - http://yay4bio.blogspot.com/2010/09/eight-year-old-receives-wwf-philippines.html?showComment=1288589932581#c5121128459157695621
"Kendra's It's Bio Time" - http://itsbiotime.blogspot.com/2010/09/national-audubon-society.html?showComment=1288588478018#c3277087811420809644
