Orangutan Foundation

Our closest animal cousins, the apes, are threatened in the wild throughout their range.

Hear conservation luminaries including Dr Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough explain their desperate plight and the reasons for optimism about their survival.

An evening of fascinating and inspiring talks, and limited admission VIP reception.

For more details and to buy tickets click here...

Orangutan Awareness Week takes place every November to draw attention to the challenges faced by wild orangutans and their rainforest home and to highlight how ordinary people can help both, including by fund-raising. To encourage the widest possible UK participation, the Orangutan Foundation names one day of each Orangutan Awareness Week as Orange For Orangutan Day© – a time when groups and individuals can demonstrate how much they care, by adding orange zest to everyday life.

For 2010, Orange For Orangutan Day© is Wednesday 10 November and we’d greatly value your involvement in it.

Story from BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science+environment-10642880)

Illegal logging in the world's forests has fallen by nearly a quarter since 2002, according to what claims to be the most thorough analysis yet.

The London-based thinktank Chatham House says consumer pressure, legal restrictions by importing countries and media attention have all contributed.

Some important forest countries such as Brazil, Cameroon and Indonesia have seen much larger cuts, its report says.

But further improvements will be harder to make, it concludes.

The biggest documented falls in illegal timber production have been in Brazil, Cameroon and Indonesia, three of the world's most heavily forested countries.

Indonesia has seen a drop of 75% in a decade. Cameroon's figure is 50%, and Brazil is between the two.

Globally, the figure is 22% since 2002.

"Late last year Indonesia made global headlines with a bold pledge to reduce deforestation, which claimed nearly 28 million hectares (108,000 square miles) of forest between 1990 and 2005 and is the source of about 80 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia would voluntarily cut emissions 26 percent — and up to 41 percent with sufficient international support — from a projected baseline by 2020.

"Last month, Indonesia began to finally detail its plan, which includes a two-year moratorium on new forestry concession on rainforest lands and peat swamps and will be supported over the next five years by a one billion dollar contribution by Norway, under the Scandinavian nation's International Climate and Forests Initiative. But while money is starting to come into place for the scheme, daunting challenges remain in the battle to reduce deforestation."

Read the whole article at Mongabay.com...