During Houston Zoo’s Orangutan Week You Can Buy Orangutan Painted Glass Christmas Ornaments
By Brian Hill
Source: Zoo and Aquarium Visitor
Houston, TX – On November 7 and 8 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days, join the Houston Zoo’s primate staff, docents and volunteers to celebrate all things orangutan!
It’s Orangutan Caring Week at the Houston Zoo. Learn about orangutans and their rainforest habitat. Visit our booth at the orangutan exhibit to shop for orangutan paintings, magnets, photo note cards and new this year painted glass Christmas ornaments!
All proceeds from Orangutan Caring Week sales will support the Zoo’s orangutan and elephant conservation projects in Indonesia.
Orangutan Caring Week is observed globally from Nov. 7 to Nov. 15. During that period, the Houston Zoo’s primate staff will conduct a Meet the Keeper Talk at the Wortham World of Primates orangutan habitat daily at 2:30 p.m.
About Orangutans
Asia’s only great ape, orangutans are one of the world’s most endangered species. May experts believe orangutans will become extinct in the wild over the next 10 years.
Some 50,000 of them, at most, still survive, and about 5,000 are thought to perish every year as the rainforests on which they depend are cut down for logging and agriculture.
Originally some 300,000 orangutans lived throughout Southeast Asia. Today they survive only in isolated pockets on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. In the past 20 years, 80 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed – and only about 2 per cent of what remains is legally protected in reserves.
Orangutans (the name means “man of the forest”) are one of our closest relatives, sharing about 97 per cent of our DNA. Mothers keep their babies with them for up to six years, and have a single baby every eight years or so. Their rate of reproduction – the slowest of all the great apes – makes them particularly vulnerable.
Orangutans have long been threatened by the pet trade. For every one that is sold as a pet, five or six are thought to die. And they are also killed for meat.
But it is the destruction of the rainforest that is their greatest threat. It has long been cleared for logging and agriculture, but this has accelerated to meet the booming demand for palm oil, used in one in every 10 products on supermarket shelves.
