Orangutan Foundation - Enquiry

Brief:

We are pleased to be collaborating with the Orangutan Foundation and are asking Year 3 students to make work that supports their cause. The work you make can be in any medium but must reflect the core values of the Foundation, which are

• Working with local people

• Supporting growing populations of orangutans

• Protecting and reforesting tropical orangutan habitat.

In this project, consider how you might raise awareness about a positive cause. How do you entice somebody to get involved or donate? - How could your work help others to stop using palm oil? - How do you make something that is imaginative, thought provoking and awareness raising at the same time? - Ask yourself whether these descriptions work in the context of the brief: cute? bleak? funny? angry? - Think about how you can create original ideas through thinking and making that might give the viewer an alternative route to consider the Foundation.

Initial research into the Orangutan Foundation ;

The foundations main mission;

'Saving orangutans by protecting their tropical forest habitat, working with local communities and promoting research and education. Our approach goes beyond that of purely protecting orangutans. It recognizes that orangutans are essential to their habitat, which is unique in its rich biodiversity and is crucial for local communities, who are as dependent on the forest as the orangutans.'

ca6702 3 orangutan species; - Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) - 57,000 estimated in wild - Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) - 13,000 estimated in wild

- Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) - 800 estimated in wild

Research from OF website; Highlighted words spark inspiration for imagery;

- 'The word orangutan means ‘person of the forest’

- '...preferred habitat is low-lying peat-swamp forest. Their distribution is influenced by fruit availability and are rarely found above 500m'.

- 'Numbers are estimated by counting their nests combined with satellite imagery'.

- 'Known to eat over 400 different foods and during times of poor fruiting they will eat less nutritious food such as bark and leaves'.

- 'Orangutans have an important role in seed dispersal. The seeds from the ripe fruit are adapted to withstand passage through the orangutans' gut. The seeds are excreted in their own small pile of faecal matter that helps them to germinate and grow. Orangutans are a vital cog in the workings of the rainforest ecosystem'.

- '...long arms and feet like hands allow them to grasp branches'.

- 'As orangutans open up the forest canopy by breaking off branches and creating gaps. This allows light to reach the forest floor, which helps the forest to regenerate naturally'.

- 'Orangutans make and sleep in a new nest each night'.

- 'When it rains they will cover their heads with leaves, which act like an umbrella'.

- 'The scarcity of food means orangutans spend up to 60% of their day foraging and competition for food leads to this solitary life'.

- 'The largest group being a mother and two offspring. The courtship period lasts between three to ten days and males share no role in the upbringing of their offspring.'

- 'A female orangutan will normally have no more than three offspring'.

THREATS TO ORANGUTANS

Palm Oil Plantations;

- 'All species of orangutans are critically endangered due to the loss, degradation, and fragmentation of their forest habitat'.

- 'The threats are illegal logging, oil-palm plantations, forest fires, mining and small-scale shifting cultivation'.

- 'By 2080, if current trends continue, it has been projected that the Bornean orangutan will lose 70-80% of its forest habitat'.

- 'Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer'.

- ' Orangutan populations are threatened because their habitat, low-lying tropical rainforest, has been cleared and converted to oil-palm plantations'.

- 'Orangutans and the biodiversity struggle to co-exist with oil-palm plantations. In recent years, fires have been used to clear land for the development of oil-palm plantations'.

Forest Fires; - 'Fires have been traditionally used for slash and burn farming'. - 'Fires destroy forests, kill and displace wildlife, emit huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and cause deadly air pollution'.

Illegal Logging;

- 'Illegal logging has been a major and complex problem in Indonesia and this can contribute to population decline'.

Mining;

- 'Mining in recent years has caused irreversible damage to Indonesia’s forests'.

- 'Illegal open cast mining for gold and zircon in protected areas has turned the lush primary rainforest into a barren and lifeless desert'.

- 'Mercury, used in the mining process, contaminates the river systems, killing fish and other wildlife'.

- 'Due to deforestation, Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases'.

Hunting & Pet Trade;

- 'In the past, hunting has been responsible for the local extinction of orangutans'.

- 'The orangutan is a protected species in Malaysia and Indonesia and it is illegal to own, harm or trade orangutans in these countries'.

- 'The process of land clearing exposes wild orangutans, who are considered as pests and consequently some are shot. If infant orangutans survive the death of their mothers, they often end up as pets in local communities'.