Orangutan – The Person of The Forest

The first time you see an orangutan, making its way through the trees high above the forest floor, you cannot help but feel a sense of awe. The leaves rustle and then the trees bend as this great ape, grabbing equally easily with hand or foot, makes its stately way past to eventually disappear amongst the trees. And when first you watch an orangutan mother and child, the baby playing and the mother protecting, you cannot help but smile to see them together. The baby, helpless for now, clinging to its mother’s back, watching and learning the way of living in the world around it. And when you think that the world around the orangutans is changing so fast, with 80% of their habitat destroyed in the last twenty years, so that they soon may be completely wiped out, you cannot help but be moved, first to sadness and next, surely, to find out what you can do to help.

Tanjung Puting National Park – one of the natural wonders of the world

What do you think of when you think of Borneo? Of a magical island of breathtaking biodiversity, where thousands of species, unknown anywhere else, still thrive? Of boat journeys into the heart of a dense jungle, barely touched by human hand? Of the forest home of monkeys, sun bears and the wild orangutan? Sadly large swathes of the island are no longer like this, as the accelerating demands of the palm oil, logging and mining industries devastate the forest. But even in the midst of such destruction some magical places remain – and one of the most famous of them is Tanjung Puting National Park.