Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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palm oil

Take Action Tuesday: Help save chimpanzees in Cameroon!

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EOA take action tuesday

A U.S. company called Herakles Farms is planning to begin a palm oil plantation in Cameroon near the border of Nigeria. Chimpanzees and gorillas live in these forests, and in fact the most endangered subspecies of each ape are living in that region. The Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee population (a.k.a. Elliot’s chimpanzee) is estimated to be approximately 3,500 individuals remaining. The Cross River gorilla population is estimated to be fewer than 300 individuals.

Endangered chimpanzees, forest elephants, and monkeys all live within the Herakles Farms concession. These already diminishing populations need our help!

Chimpanzee, Nigeria

This form letter has been put together to make it very easy for us to lend our voice in support of the apes, courtesy of Greenpeace. Although it is very convenient to just fill in your name and email and hit “send”—it really helps to make your letter unique. Tell the CEO of Herakles Farms why it is important to you that their plans for a palm oil plantation in Cameroon be canceled immediately.

We know from the plight of orangutans in Southeast Asia that palm oil directly negatively affects their population, sometimes driving orangutans and other forest dwellers to starvation when their homes are slashed and burned to the ground to make room for the plantations. In your day-to-day life, try to be a conscious consumer and avoid palm oil where you can. You can help be an advocate for apes every day by taking this extra effort to check the ingredient list of products you buy!

After sending your letter, take a few minutes to watch the second installment of a video interview with Dr. Debra Durham, where she talks a little bit about her conservation efforts with wild chimpanzees. Her current project is called Compassion in Action Mushroom Project (it’s a really innovative plan to help protect wild chimpanzees—be sure to check it out!)

Upcoming guest bloggers

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I’m pretty excited to announce that we’re going to be featuring some guest bloggers who work with apes in the wild! Our mission at the sanctuary is to provide quality lifetime care for the Cle Elum Seven, but also to advocate for apes everywhere. If you’re signed up for our Take Action list, you’ve probably received some action alerts from Eyes on Apes before. These are usually for issues that our nonhuman ape cousins face close to home, like the entertainment, pet, and biomedical industries.

Free-living apes are facing a whole different set of issues. In Africa their habitat is slowly being torn down, and the logging roads create access for hunters to easily hunt chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and a whole slew of other exotic animals and sell their meat on the black market (it’s called the bushmeat trade). In Southeast Asia, orangutans are losing much of their habitat to palm oil plantations and other agricultural development.

From afar, there’s only so much detail we can provide—but those who are right there witnessing these issues can paint a very different picture. Our goal is to have them tell their stories, and help us to help our closest living relatives who are literally facing extinction.

We already have folks lined up for this exciting project: Dr. Cleve Hicks (former graduate student at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute just down the road) who is now working with apes in the Bili Forest in central Africa; Dr. Debra Durham who is currently in east Africa and has expertise in both captive and free-living issues (you might remember this article about PTSD in ex-biomedical lab chimps, including Negra); and Dr. Zarin Machanda who met JB and Diana at the Fauna Foundation years ago, and has worked with chimpanzees in east Africa. Stay tuned for these stories with great information coming very soon!

Here’s a photo of Negra, who now gets to have sunshine, friends, and choices after being stolen from Africa and used in biomedical research for decades. Let’s raise awareness about others like Negra still in labs, and for her relatives in Africa that need our help. Share this video and subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already, so you’ll be sure to get notified of the upcoming guest blogger posts!

web Negra green grass Young's Hill YH IMG_8027

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Guest blog posts:

Resilience and The Landmine Snare by Maureen McCarthy

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part One, Two, and Three and The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili by Dr. Cleve Hicks

Video interview Part One and Part Two with Dr. Debra Durham (presented as a Take Action Tuesday posts)

Jacky and Nama by Dr. Sheri Speede

Meet the Chimpanzees of Kanyawara and Research at Kanyawara by Dr. Zarin Machanda

Margot and Is successful reintroduction possible? by Dr. Gwendy Reyes-Illg

Why are orangutans endangered in the wild? by Rich Zimmerman

Take Action Tuesday: Another chimp ad + how to help orangutans

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If you haven’t heard, Great Clips had a commercial a couple weeks ago that featured a chimpanzee. Just a day after our alert went out and folks wrote to them, the CEO made a statement saying they would pull the ad and never work with apes again! Victories like this keep the momentum going—your letter writing really does make a difference! On that note please send a quick message to Steak ‘n Shake, who currently has a commercial with a chimpanzee:

Screen capture of the Steak 'n Shake "ultimate dream" commercial
Screen capture of the Steak ‘n Shake “Daydream” commercial

Click on this link to be taken to the action alert which contains contact information and a sample letter. Be sure to spread the word and forward the alert to your friends! And if you haven’t subscribed to our Take Action: Eyes on Apes Alerts mailing list already, sign up now.

Another way you can help apes right now is to sign this petition to Dr. Oz, who recommended his viewers try using palm oil as a healthy alternative oil. Please let him and his producers know that palm oil production is slowly driving orangutans into extinction! For more information about this issue, take a look at this past Take Action Tuesday post.

Thank you as always for speaking up for these apes. Keep up the great work!

Take Action Tuesday: How orangutans are affected by the food and personal care products we buy

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Last week we discussed issues that face free-living chimpanzees (and also the other two African apes, gorillas and bonobos). Today I want to take action on a hot topic: palm oil. Free-living orangutan populations are only found on the small islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Since that climate is also really great for palm plantations, which produce palm oil, much of the orangutan habitat has been ripped apart for these plantations. Palm oil is found in almost everything these days—a lot of our food is full of it as well as bath and body products. If the average American opened their cupboards I would guess the majority of the products they have contain palm oil. Watch this great episode of NBC’s Rock Center that discusses the issue in depth.

What can we do? It’s pretty hard to avoid palm oil, but read the labels and choose products that don’t have palm oil over others that do. As the Rock Center article and video mention, the one section of forest known as Tripa has had one company’s permit revoked after an investigation began about the illegal slash and burn agriculture. However, there are still other companies operating in Tripa. Sign this petition to put pressure on the Indonesian government to Save Tripa and the orangutans that live there!

And, since we all really love our vegan butter (which usually contains palm oil), Diana and JB looked up some alternate butter recipes so we could start reducing the amount of palm oil we buy. After doing a small taste test, this is the one that staff decided we liked the best, however we used guar gum instead of xantham powder, and added extra salt.

photo courtesy of The Orangutan Project’s Facebook page