“It is our Indonesian’s orangutans, why are we always seeing white people doing protection?,” says Reza, leader of APE Defender of COP, with his eyes glittering, ‘Why do we Indonesians, we yellow race, rarely take part in protecting Orangutans, Sapiens of our forests?’ His words indeed impressed me and made me ponder whether there are roles for us Chinese people as well that we should take.

Decades ago, Kalimantan Island had a forest coverage rate of eighty percent. However, in the middle of the 1980s, forest area in Kalimantan extensively decreased twenty-five percent and it kept the annual decreasing area of 1.3 billion hectares. This means orangutans’ living habitat was disappearing at the same speed and most of the destroyed area had been used for planting palm trees. Because of covering of palm oil plantation, orangutans lose their major resource of food. Sometimes they are so hungry that they come into palm tree forests and eat small palm trees, their only food coming. As a result, palm oil companies called orangutans as ‘pests’ and found excuses to brutally kill them.

Till 2016, the number of orangutans has decreased around sixty percent. Under this situation, Hardi, once worked as an assistant to Lone Droscher Nielsen at the Nyarumenteng Orangutan Reintroduction Centre/ BOSF (Borneo Orangutan Survive Foundation), set up COP (Center of Orangutan Protection) to fight directly with palm oil plantation companies and save orangutans. Despise the risk of being arrested, COP members enter palm oil plantation to collect evidences of orangutans being killed. In this way, those palm oil companies will have no chance to sell their palm oil because they cannot get permits from RSPO (Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil). Also, COP members visit schools, organize exhibitions, and hold concerts to attract more people to pay attention to orangutans. Their advocates are an essential part of orangutan protection.

As a member of the first Chinese volunteer groups to visit COP Borneo in August 2017, we stayed there for a week. We studied orangutans’ situation, made activity space for baby orangutans, prepared food for orangutans in island, and observed orangutans’ daily. (Zi Chen, Jiawei Yang_Orangufriends)

Sabtu, 19 Agustus 2017 bertepatan dengan hari orangutan sedunia. Orangufriends Aceh bersama mahasiswa yang peduli nasib dan kondisi orangutan saat ini melakukan aksi penyadartahuan kepada siswa tingkat sekolah menengah atas, membagikan stiker gratis yang bertema “Year of Freedom”.

Kegiatan seperti ini biasanya disebut school visit. School visit di SMA Negeri 2 Meulaboh, Aceh Barat bertujuan menginformasikan dan mengajak siswa untuk lebih mengenal kondisi orangutan yang merupakan satwa endemik Indonesia.

“Ini adalah kegiatan yang baru bagi kami. Dan melihat ketiga anak muda yang penuh semangat ini berbagi pengetahuan tentang orangutan, ancaman orangutan dan habitatnya termasuk penyebab kebakaran hutan dan dunia konservasi satwa lainnya, membuat kami sadar tentang pentingnya menyelamatkan orangutan.”, ujar guru geografi itu terharu.

Di akhir kegiatan ada salah satu siswa yang mendekat lalu bertanya, “Kak, bagaimana caranya jika saya ingin menjadi relawan untuk menyelamatkan orangutan di Indonesia khususnya di Sumatera?”.

“Ada banyak cara yang bisa kita lakukan untuk menyelamatkan orangutan. Hal yang paling mudah adalah menyebarkan informasi seluas-luasnya kepada siapapun tentang pentingnya menjaga dan melestarikan orangutan dan habitatnya.”, jawab Desti Ariani, orangufriends Aceh.

“Kami dari SMA Negeri 2 Meulaboh, peduli akan nasib orangutan. Save orangutan and Happy International Orangutan Day!!!”, seru para siswa dan guru-guru dengan terikan lantang dan penuh semangat. (Desti_COPSchool7).