What I thought was a sweet and light-hearted music video about being an orangutan turned out to be more controversial than I expected.

Orangutans are threatened with extinction, but nevertheless I wanted to create a sense of joy about orangutans in the music video so that people who didn't know them
would be entranced by the combination of music and video.

I collaborated with the Florida musician J.P. Taylor, who wrote the music for the lyrics I created and then sang the song in his wonderful voice, with warmth and humour.

I had trouble finding enough video footage of orangutans swinging through trees, but when I met Kurtis Pei in Taiwan at his Pingtung animal rescue centre, he gave me some footage.

Nevertheless, the footage was short and I had to use a few short clips of an orangutan riding a bicycle and a motorcycle.

Reaction was sharply divided about the wisdom of showing an orangutan riding a bicycle. Some mainstream viewers were charmed that an orangutan could ride a bicycle so well and it contrasted the image in their minds of an orangutan as just a "wild" animal. Others who protest the use of orangutans as a kind of circus animal used for profit were outraged that an orangutan wasn't shown totally in the "wild."

The division is typical of the different ways that orangutans are seen in our society. Orangutans are intelligent, sentient beings, with emotion and a basic culture. But, are orangutans "wild" animals that need to be kept in pristine wild conditions "uncontaminated" by human beings? Or are they a kind of "person," with the fundamental rights of a human being, including the right to develop and evolve beyond the jungle?

It is a tricky issue and our ethics are still so primitive that we are probably not able to handle the issues adequately.

It is not so long ago that women and pygmies from Africa were seen by some as lesser species that needed to be managed and kept in a state that was apparently "natural" for them. Some people thought that educating them and giving them choices would not be "natural." That is no longer the conventional wisdom, at least in the more enlightened parts of the world.

But now we can still debate what is right for orangutans in terms of being "wild" and "natural."

A hundred years in the future will we see this attitude as another form of human colonialism and paternalism, or will we regret how we have affected the original state of orangutans in the jungle?

You be the judge.

In the meantme, take a look at this two-minute orangutan music video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaDg65NREVQ

Greeting card using the image of an orangutan

Maybe I have been spending too much time with orangutans, but I was offended with a greeting card using a photo of an orangutan picking its nose.

It was a birthday card with the words inside,  "I picked out something really nice for your birthday."

I thought the card was offensive and doubly so using orangutans as the butt of the ridicule.

The card came from an American company but I discovered it at my local gas station in the mountainous interior of British Columbia when I went for milk one night. I bought the card as evidence and the clerk behind the counter made me fume even more by commenting that the card was "funny."

I e-mailed the Marian Heath greeting card company in Wareham, Massachusetts, and the president, Kimberley Lehrman, e-mailed back.

She said the card is one of her company's best sellers, which is a kind of commercial justification, as well as indicating how far out of step I am from the sense of humour of people in general.

Part of my message was that the image of orangutans shouldn't be used commercially without helping people to understand that they are an endangered species.

I made that argument to the billion-dollar telecommunications giant Telus several years ago, when it used images of gleeful orangutans to sell its services. I told Telus it should at least tell people that orangutans are endangered. I received a baffled phone call from the director of marketing who obviously felt I didn't understand how the business world works.

I also asked the greeting card company to at least acknowledge on the back of the card that orangutans are endangered, a fact that most people don't know. After all, the company makes a point of advertising that it is environmentally responsible by being carbon neutral and by using recycled paper. But my request was ignored.

Lehrman did cite an article in the American Journal of Nasal Anatomy by a scientist at Harvard University that both humans and apes pick their noses, which apparently has implications for evolution. She went on to say that the card "enhances our awareness of how alike we are, and with those barriers removed, we can be better advocates for their environment."

Those sentiments are noble, if sincere, and I am impressed that Lehrman is so ready to cite the science of nose picking. There is a lot more research that goes into a greeting card than I realized.

I may be too sensitive about all this, but, if you want to raise awareness about orangutans, you might see how many of friends you can convince to send an e-mail to the president of the greeting card company, Kimberley Lehrman, at klehrman@marianheath.com or kim@lehrmans.com

Orangutan baby is born at Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois

Shawn Thompson

Being an orangutan would be a lot of fun:

I could live in the tropics where my furry ass wouldn’t freeze

And have sex all morning long, thank you, not just a hug and a squeeze.

I would shun Facebook and Twitter all together like a weird rotten disease

And sleep when I want and not butcher the trees.

I’d choose my own kids carefully, just as I please,

And not feel stifled and cramped without space and a breeze.

I wouldn’t grovel for money, like those corporate thieves,

No sinking in consumerism up to my elbows and knees.

I wouldn’t look for trouble; I’d be diplomatic and appease,

With none of the hooting of those damn chimpanzees.

I’d take ginger and mangoes to the people overseas

And reconcile all of China to the sweet Taiwanese.

I think an existence like that would be full of nobility and prestige,

Plus it has fruit and companionship and a life in the leaves.

Being an orangutan would be a lot of fun

Except for extinctshun.

AN EXPLANATION: I started Orangutan Appreciation Day this year in 2010 to get people to get their friends to pledge to work the word "orangutan" into conversation with a stranger on Feb. 12, which is also Darwin's birthday.

The idea is to fill the world with the awareness of orangutans, starting by using their name. I decided to try the idea on Facebook and have between 300 and 400 people making the pledge this year. That's a good start. Maybe next year I can expand it.

On Facebook, I am giving a free copy of my new orangutan book to the person with the most pledges.

Why Feb. 12? Well, Darwin and his theory of evolution liberated apes and humans and helped demonstrate our kinship. Plus February is such a dreary time in Europe and North America it needed a holiday.

I think the next step is to approach municipalities to designate Feb. 12 as Orangutan Appreciation Day. Even getting the item on the agenda of a municipal council is raising awareness, whether or not the municipality accepts the event.

I wonder if that scene with the orangutan will help establish the image of orangutans in the mind of the public, much like the Clint Eastwood films did with the orangutan Clyde. Orangutans need all the help they can get to be in the public mind more. 

Keynes says of the Darwin film, "There is a scene where Darwin connects with an orangutan in London Zoo and finds it self-evident that humans and primates have much in common. I began weeping at that point and didn't stop until the end." 

Let's lobby to have the bridge renamed Orangutan Arches

Richard Zimmerman of Orangutan Outreach and I may have been showing signs of fatigue as we chatted about orangutan issues for an hour on Skype today, he in New York City and I between mountains in British Columbia.

I say fatigue because Richard has been travelling the globe a lot lately in the service of orangutans and the ideas were beginning to flow with the kind of slippery giddiness that you get from too many security scans in airports.

We were discussing how to seize the popular imagination and popularize the plight of orangutans as an endangered species. There is so much to worry about in the world, orangutans sometimes seem like a drop in the ocean. How do you get people to think about orangutans? How do you even understand how the world is changing in terms of reaching out and contacting people?

Richard and I decided that popular culture now belongs to young women. Certainly you get that if you watch what is happening through the popular media and through the new social media like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr and so on.

Richard says that young women are among the most helpful and committed in his organization. His word for the younger ones is "oranguteens," although the whole group apparently spans women between the ages 15 and 30.

Richard and I talked some more about what kind of figure might be needed to bring orangutans crashing into the popular imagination and then his video image seemed to fall apart on Skype and we were yanked back into our different time zones.

I was thinking of more ideas afterward, like asking the city council in San Francisco to rename the Golden Gate bridge the Orangutan Arches.The bridge is already reddish, like orangutans, so that it wouldn't needed to be painted, a real cost saving for taxpayers. And San Francisco is an innovative place. It already has gay pride, so it could have pongopride too. (The word "pongo" seems to have originated in the Congo word for ape.)

The point of pongopride is that human beings, orangutans and the other apes are all descended from a common ancestor, a progenitor or avatar who I think should be called ur-angutan.The word Ur comes from an ancient city in Sumeria that predates others. We are all members of the ape family, so we are ur-angutans.

My other idea was to lobby a singer like Feist to put the word "orangutan" in one of her songs. A simple act like that would raise the consciousness of orangutans among the rulers of the new social media, the young female pongogirl, and have a twittering ripple effect.

I wanted to leave a message for Feist on her website tonight, but I couldn't find a button, which made me feel frustrated and a bit of an orangugran too.

Libby Lawson, a sprightly orangutan keeper at the zoo in Seattle, officially tasted my first batch of rain-forest friendly orangutan cookies today.

The idea is to create a cookie that promotes the protection of the rain forest habitat of orangutans and uses ingredients familiar to orangutans. The result is the "orangunookie," which I hope doesn't sound sexually suggestive.

Libby told me she likes sugar -- although the orangutans at the Seattle zoo get a safe and sensible sugar subsitute in their juice and yogurt.

The orangunookie is "very good," Libby said - and I know that orangutan keepers have to be straightforward and honest to deal with orangutans. "I found it very satisfying," she said, "and I have a real sweet tooth. The cookie seems only a little sweet and is not overly nutty." Libby liked the colour I got for  my "green" cookie by using green food colouring.

Speaking of food, it was feeding time when I arrived at the zoo and Libby took me to lunch with the orangutans. I watched the massive orangutan Towan daintily using his teeth to pick even the last bit of orange out of the rind.

Towan is 41 years old and 297 pounds. He likes to paint. In fact, he pretty much gets consumed by it. He's an experimental artist with no formal training and has combined coloured pen and chalk.

Libby told me a story about how compassionate and gentle Towan is. One time a young possum fell inside the orangutan enclosure and when Towan tried to pick it up, it bit him. But Towan was too good natured to retaliate. He just held the possum to avoid being bitten and later signaled to Libby that she could retrieve the possum.

As the dominant male, the protocol is to feed Towan first. Then Libby went to feed the others, including Towan's twin sister, Chinta, who weighs considerably less than her brother at 168 pounds. Although she likes to spit at people and squirts water at them when they turn their backs, she also likes to socialize with folks and has a regular spot next to the glass at the zoo where she can interact with we human apes.

While the orangutans were being fed, I noticed that Libby was playing NPR jazz for them, a wise choice. The jazz and the sound of artificial waterfalls constructed at the zoo help screen out the distraction of human sounds.

***

Here's my recipe for the green orangutan cookie.

You need one cup of raw cashews, 1/4 cup of skim milk, 3/4 cup of sugar, one egg, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, 1 cup of shredded coconut, 2 tsp of coconut flavour, one cup of flour, 1/4 tsp baking soda. 1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/2 a cup of Sun Maid Tropical Trio dried fruit (pineapple, papaya and mango) and a dash of salt. Crush the nuts into different sizes from grains to bits with a pestle and add the milk. Mix with the sugar, egg, coconut flavour and vanilla. Put in the flour, baking soda, nutmeg and salt. Add 1/8 tsp green food colouring. Add dried fruit and shredded coconut. Put spoon- sized dollops on a cookie sheet and flatten with a wetted fork. Add a few small pieces of dried fruit for garnish to the top. Bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes. Makes 18 average-sized cookies with crispy brown bottoms and textured, chewy insides.

When you serve the orangunookie, make sure that you explain in a lightly serious tone that it is made to make friends with orangutans by being a little nutty, a little fruity and without palm oil. The forests of the orangutan in Borneo and Sumatra are cut down for palm oil plantations.

Let me know how you like the cookies

One year old

It's in the Koran, apparently.

I was talking to Niel Makinuddin in blustery Balikpapan today. I say "blustery" because Balikpapan is an oil city in Kamimantan Borneo where the wind and surf blowing ashore all day give this place a different feeling for the tropics.

Niel is the forty-five-year-old Kamlimantan manager for the Orangutan Conservation Service Program of the international environment group the Nature Conservancy.

I was trying to figure out where Niel's passion for the environment came from and he started talking about being born in a farming village of a thousand people in a mountain valley of east Java where there were no cars or electricity when he was a child in the late 1960s.

Niel said his father was an influence -- and the Koran too. Niel is a devout Muslim and he told me that the Koran has a number of passages that speak of doing no damage to the land and wildlife. That made an impression on him. "God ordered us not to destroy the environment," he said. That's impressive, particularly since the Koran was written centuries before we woke up to the disastrous way we are destroying the natural world.

In fact, religious leaders, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim, are enlisted to give an environmental message to their flock in Indonesia.

Niel is optimistic, too, about the chances for saving the rainforest habitat of orangutans, which is the only way that orangutans can be saved as a species.

Many of the scientists and conservationists that I have talked to believe, to the contrary, that the rapidly dwindling numbers of wild orangutans and the rapid conversion of rainforest for palm oil plantations, pulp and paper and mining, mean the end of orangutans. These people don't have much faith in politics.

However, Niel told me that there is some hope between the powerful federal anti-corruption agency(Komisi Pemberantantasan Korupsi) which has put some prominent politicians in jail for being involved in the conversion of rainforest, and the federal government's National Orangutan Action Plan, launched in Demember 2007 with the help of the Nature Conservancy.

That ambitious plan would save by 2017 all the habitat needed for the survival of the orangutans, Niel told me.

However, he added that it would be a good idea to have a ministerial decree to give the plan more power as a government regulation.

As in all things political, you have to wait and see, but it was only a few days ago that I was in Jakarta talking to the remarkable orangutan campaigner Angelina Sondakh, who is an elected member of the Indonesian parliament. I had the feeling that Angelina isn't the average politician in Indonesia, but she has as much bluster as the sea wind I'm feeling here in Kalimantan.

It was pouring rain today in the streets of old Jakarta with thunder and lightning msking it dramatic, but I was inside listening to tales of bold orangutan rescues in West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.

Seto Hari Wibowo was telling me this is why he joined the Centre for Orangutan Protection eighteen months ago.

The centre is a core group of ten men and women in their twenties who feel so strongly about protecting orangutans that they have abandoned relatively more lucrative careers as journalists and artists to make public protests against the devastation of the rainforests and the mistreatment of orangutans held in small zoos or in homes.

Seto is a twenty-seven-year-old photographer from east Java with a thick head of curly black hair. He is married, with a daughter. His title with the organization is captivity program co-ordinator.

Seto has done dozens of rescues since he has joined the organization. He told me a story about one rescue of an orangutan held illegally as a pet in the home of a police officer in West Kalimantan. Yes, this is a country where the police ignore the law when it is convenient for them.

Seto went to the home of the officer with three policemen and three forestry officials because he alone does not have the legal power to confiscate an orangutan.

The wife of the officer came to the door and tried to shoo them away, but the seven men insisted and had the woman sign a release form.

The orangutan was a two-year-old male kept in a bare cage at the front of the house for entertainment. Seto believes the wife was afraid of the creature.

Seto took the orangutan to a temporary shelter, where he would be moved four months later to the rehabilitation centre of Lone Droscher-Nielsen, who I met at her centre near Palangkaraya several years ago. The Danish woman founded the rehabilitation centre and it is now filling to the seams with orangutans.

Seto was worried about the orangutan at the temporary shelter because he was alone, in a strange place, in another bare cage. So, to comfort the creature he gave it a leaf, which is a gesture an orangutan would understand and appreciate.

It was at that moment that Seto saw tears in the eyes of the orangutan.

"I think it's just sad," Seto told me. "It's deeply sad. He's so young and he needs his mother's care. They have no friends."

I was sitting listening to this with Kili Pringgodigdo, who quit her job at the Jakarta Post to work at the orangutan centre for half the salary at the newspaper because she loves the creatures like the others do. The stories about orangutans were affecting Kili so much that I could see the tears starting to form in her eyes.

Meanwhile, outside, the streets of Jakarta were awash with a cooling rain and life went on in the city as usual.

A politician who cares

Orangutans have a rare and genuine political ally in Angelina Sondakh.

The thirty-one-year-old politician won her second term in the Indonesian parliament in the 2009 election with the ruling Democrat party, even with her vehement campaigning to save orangutans and the rainforest.

That's not a particularly popular stand to take in Indonesia where the economy has piority over the environment and Angelina draws senseless criticism for talking about orangutans rather than the poverty-stricken of her country.

Yet when I sat down to talk to her for two hours today at her office in Jakarta, she pointed out that voters still strongly support her. She came eleventh in votes out of a parliament with 560 seats now.

You can't help but be impressed by this politician.

Her office is filled with orangutan posters and she isn't shy about speaking out, doing it years before she ran for political office in 2004.

Born in a family from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi where serious issues of the environment and politics were discussed at home, she was active in environment projects while still in high school.

I wouldn't feel like mentioning that she also won the Miss Indonesia beauty contest, except that someone will notice if I skip it. But it hardly seems relevant for a woman who did a master's degree in political communication which helped her forge her political strategy. Popularity only accounts for 15.7 per cent of the chance of being elected, she told me. Not beauty contests.

So, with the combination of an environmental ethos and political savvy, this is a politician to watch in Indonesia.

I think she might be able to find wide support for orangutans and the rainforest in the women of her country. If you look around the world, it is women who have taken these issues to heart, like Kenya's Wangari Maathai.

Angelina knows that the real progress is to be made in the implementation and enforcement of Indonesian's substantial environmental legislation.

She tried to get a petition among parliament members to create legislation to prohibit trafficking in wild animals. In Indonesia, a proposal for new legislation requires support from one third of the members of parliament and she didn't get that. But she isn't deterred.

We have to think of the future now, Angelina told me, and that sentiment seemed even more relevant for a woman expecting her first child, a daughter named Keanu, meaning "cool breeze of the mountains."

"If we can save the forest, it means that we can save human lives," she told me.

In the meantime, she is pressing the Indonesian parliament for a room where a female politician can breast feed her child.

Coffee beans on the island of Java

Can you talk to orangutans?" the young Muslim woman asked me, in Bogor, the old Dutch capital of Indonesia on the island of Java.

I could see the dragonflies hovering as the clouds gathered to pour rain.

Yes, I said, giving the simplest answer. She listened with large intent brown eyes as I explained that I had met the orangutan Princess in Tanjung Puting park in Borneo and that Princess had been taught sign language.

Then I talked about how intelligent orangutans are and how much they have in common with us and how they can understand us and we them.

The young woman seemed truly interested. That's good, because she has a role to play in saving the rainforest.

We were at the botonical gardens in Bogor where she was being briefed to be an auditor for the Rainforest Alliance. The auditors ensure that tea and coffee and palm oil plantations adhere to the ecological standards that win certification by the Rainforest Alliance, which is an economic advantage in selling products to consumers who want to help the environment.

The briefing was done by Peter Sprang of the Rainforest Alliance, based in Bali, and by his colleague, a drowsy Leif Pedersen, who had just come off a long flight from Costa Rica, where he is based.

It started to pour rain, so we lingered under a roof in conversation about the difficulty of helping coffee farmers and using better ecological practices.

I was very naive, of course, talking about how the coffee farmers would benefit if the slew of middlemen who move the coffee to the coffee companies could be trimmed down, with more of the price of coffee going directly to the farmer. And I pointed out that there were savings to the farmer of organic farming.

But nothing is that simple, right?

The young woman explaned to me how the structure of middlemen is so entrenched that everyone, including the farmer, depends on it.

And Leif explained that organic farming required training and a slow process of implementation to work.

I would prefer that things be solved quickly and everyone be happy, but maybe I'm not living in the real world. But then I appreciate even more the work that the Rainforest Alliance does through dedicated people like Peter Sprang and Leif Pedersen. I'd call them practical optimists.

We talked about these matters and after a while the rain stopped. The travel-weary Leif fell asleep in the taxi on the way back to Jakarta.