In the name of World Animal Week 2007 (4th - 10th of October) and as the first project of ~AnimalCare a new club, please take the time to read and consider what you could do.

The facts

The orangutans are two species of great apes known for their intelligence and their long arms and reddish-brown hair. They are native to Indonesia and Malaysia, and currently only found in the rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
Their name derives from the Indonesian and Malay phrase orang hutan which means "person of the forest".

The orangutans are the most arboreal ("related to or resembling trees") of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees. Every night they shape nests to sleep in, from branches and foliage. They are very solitary compared to the other apes, with males and females generally coming together only to mate.

The issue and what you can do

Their mothers stay with their babies until they reach an age of around 6 - 7 years, which brings us to a quite unfortunate subject and the reason to start a project. Orangutan habitat destruction due to logging, mining and forest fires has been increasing rapidly in the last decade.
Some UN scientists believe that these plantations could lead to the extinction of the species by the year 2012. Much of this activity is illegal, occurring in national parks that are officially off limits to loggers, miners and plantation development. There is also a huge problem with the poaching of baby orangutans for sale into the pet trade; the trappers usually kill the mother to steal the baby.

The Bornean species of orangutans is highly endangered, and the Sumatran species is critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals

There for our first project will turn to Nyaru Menteng the world’s largest orangutan rehabilitation center, placed in Borneo.
The center is taking care of more than 650 orangutans until they are of age and trained well enough to take care of themselves, after which they are released to the wild again.
Unfortunately the center has lost a very big sponsor, as the company sponsoring Nyaru Menteng went bankrupt, this obviously means that they have been lacking a large amount of money and they fear that they will have to shut down the center near December when they run out.
It costs around 2968 USD (16000 DKK, 2113 EUR) for the full care of 1 orangutan until it is released into the wild again.
If the center is shut down it will mean that more than 650 orangutans are homeless, and over 150 local employess stand without a job.

BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival) is a international (though quite unknown) organisation which helped the Danish Lone Dröscher Nielsen open up Nyaru Menteng back in 1999.
BOS has many different homepages for each country, and you will find a few links at the bottom of this news article. The homepages gives the ability to donate money often directly to Nyaru Menteng, and if not then they will go to something else that will help the orangutans greatly.
There might also be an adoption site to be found, where you symbolical "adopt" an orangutan which development you can follow by emails and you pay a small amount every month until its release.

Links

BOS - International
BOS - United Kingdom
BOS - Australia
BOS - Indonesian (Written in English)
BOS - Denmark
BOS - Sweden
BOS - Germany
BOS - SwitzerlandBOS - Japan

COP - Centre for Orangutan Protection
WSPA - World Society for the Protection of Animals

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On behalf of ~AnimalCare,

*Spiracy