Celebrating Orangutan Moms at the Milwaukee County Zoo

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What happens when you combine orangutan care professionals, enthusiastic volunteers and community members who love the red apes? You get an awesome Missing Orangutan Mothers (M.O.M.) awareness and fundraising event!

We would like to thank everyone at the Milwaukee County Zoo for supporting the Orangutan Outreach 2023 M.O.M. Campaign by holding an awesome M.O.M. event at their zoo! The Milwaukee County Zoo has been supporting the efforts of Orangutan Outreach for 16 years, and they are always happy to hold a M.O.M. event to support our annual Missing Orangutan Mothers campaign. The annual event was on a hiatus due to the pandemic, but things are slowly getting back up to full speed!

Each year Orangutan Outreach creates a Missing Orangutan Mothers (M.O.M.) Campaign, which culminates on Mother’s Day. The M.O.M. Campaign celebrates the beautiful orangutan mother-child relationship. It also brings attention to all the orphaned orangutans in care centers throughout Indonesia. Any zoo or orangutan conservation organization is welcome to participate.

This year on Mother’s Day, the Milwaukee County Zoo hosted a fun and educational event. The orangutan care team and wonderful volunteers were on hand to help visitors learn about the special relationships between orangutan mothers have with their children. They further educated visitors about what happens when orangutan babies are stolen from their mothers to be held or sold as illegal pets. The lucky babies are rescued from their captors and brought to rehabilitation centers. Since they are missing their mothers, human caretakers provide the orphans with love, support, and life lessons. The Milwaukee County Zoo team provided all this information to help visitors learn, care, and then take action to help the babies!

Visitors had a chance to purchase Mother’s Day cookies, orangutan artwork, and special orangutan art necklaces. Guests could also make a donation to help “give deforestation the boot” to assure future forests for the babies to return to. All this led to the raising of over $1000, which Orangutan Outreach will send to our partners caring for orangutan babies in Indonesia. Amazing!

We are very grateful to all our friends at the Milwaukee County Zoo and all the guests who supported their successful Missing Orangutan Mothers event!

Learn more about our M.O.M. campaign