Last week I ordered a brand new lens - the Canon 100-400mm, perfect for the zoo. Eager and ready to go out on the weekend with it and see how it would change the way I shoot at the zoo, I was kind of unimpressed to realise the weather bureau hadn’t faked me out during the week and it really was forecast to RAIN, thunder and the works.
Saturday mornng came and it didn’t look quite as bad as predicted, so I crossed my fingers and headed out anyway. You know what’s coming next - it began raining at about 9.40am and didn’t look like it was going to stop…..ever. Zoos cost money though, and I’d already travelled an hour and a half to be there, so I headed for the best undercover area I knew of - the Orangutans.
While a few miserable looking people with ponchos and umbrellas had had the same thought as me, the usually ultra popular enclosure was mostly empty. This means that for once, I could get prime spot at the windows right next to the Orangutans with no tiny little toddlers in the way.
The truth is, while I was disappointed I couldn’t really give my new lens a good workout, being forced to spend an hour or so at my favourite exhibit, with hardly anyone about - was a gift of sorts. It was early morning so Kiani and her daughter Gabby were out, covered in blankies and trying to remain dry. They’d been given some treats and puzzles to play with and had access to their heated night den, but chose to stay up top with the visitors. Kiani is my favourite Orangutan at Melbourne Zoo because of her gorgeous smile and expressive features, and so getting to sit ‘with’ her for a while, showing her my camera and bag (yep she likes to look) and occasionally taking a photo of her was great. Every now and then Kiani would pull her blankie/sheet over her head to do something - and I realised when I looked closer that she was actually playing with a pimple on her lip. Even orangutans need to pop pimples every now and then.
Orangutans are fascinating to watch because they are both unique and familiar at the same time. You can’t help but feel some kind of connection to them - they are one of our closest relatives and their intelligence and capacity for complex emotions is clear to observe. They are such large apes, but gentle and introspective (except perhaps Malu!). In the wild they live their lives up in the trees, rarely even coming down unless they need to. Males lead solitary lives, but the young have the longest dependence of any animal, staying with their mother and nursing until the age of 6 or 7. Orangutans are even smart enough to make umbrellas out of leaves when it rains.
As I was sitting there watching them though, you can’t help but feel a kind of sadness. Not because they are captive, but because you can’t love Orangutans without it hitting you every now and then that they really are highly endangered and predictions show extinction as early as 2012. That’s not far away…not at all.
After I got home and loaded up the photos I’d taken, I was motivated to look up some of the Orangutan conservation sites I knew about. I knew and had read about palm oil and the destruction of their habitat for example, but I realised I didn’t quite know the full story and was curious about the extra details - there must be more to it than my decision to avoid Tim Tams.
Turns out, I’d been naive and ignorant about just how bad the situation was. I knew the forests were disappearing but it hadn’t occured to me that these Orangutans were literally either starving to death or being killed by loggers. Rainforests are being destroyed and replaced with palm trees at rates so fast I can barely get my head around it. The Orangutans have nowhere to go and nothing to survive on, so as they venture further out, they are captured, slaughtered and tortured and left to die by plantation workers.
As I read further details I was completely sickened - sickened to read of a female Orangutan shaved from head to toe and used as a prostitute. Sickened by photos of stunning male Orangutans with their heads cut off, and left to rot as rubbish. I knew Orangutans were dying, but I’d had no idea they were dying like this.
The fact that palm oil can be grown on lands that are already cleared and there is no reason for this destruction and murder other than human greed should make us all feel…angry.
I love the other primates but there is something gentle and beautiful about the Orangutan that makes it all the more sadder. I’ve visited the Orangutans at Melbourne Zoo so often and seen the quiet but silly antics of Santan as he plays with his son Malu. I’ve seen Malu’s mum Maimunah give the Orangutan equivalent of an eye roll at her son’s silliness. I’ve seen Kiani and Gabby roll around on the ground hugging each other and I’ve seen Malu jump around like a lunatic and show off for the visitors. How are we letting them all die?
It’s not all doom and gloom though, because it’s the unwitting consumer that is fuelling this unreasonable need for palm oil. It is a vegetable oil found in many common supermarket products. We must realise it is avoidable and we can only hope that less demand will save the Orangutan and other effected animals in Borneo and Sumatra.
I encourage everyone to download this easy to read pamphlet on the Palm Oil problem
http://redapes.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/bos_palmoilreport.pdf
I’m also donating all the profits from any Orangutan photos sold to one of the Australian based Orangutan conservation efforts.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/durberville/art/everything/tags/orangutan
It is a small thing, but we have to try.
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