My Life With Orangutans

Deep in the middle of Borneo’s jungle lives a woman who has become the mother of 600 orangutans. Lone Dröscher Nielsen has dedicated her life to the charismatic animals which are among one of the world’s most endangered animal species, and she has been struggling hard for the survival of the orangutan for the past 13 years.

Lone is the head of the world’s largest rehabilitation centre for orangutans. She founded the centre eight years ago and today she is responsible for 600 organgutans and 150 employees. She is trying to help apes, who have lived in captivity or who have been held illegally as pets, ease their way back into nature. Furthermore, she teaches young apes that have lost their mothers, how to take care of themselves.

The very smallest apes are being nurtured in Lone’s own home, as there is no room for them at the centre. She has turned her living room into a nursery for 15 baby orangutans, which are taken care of by her and four other babysitters. In the kitchen they boil feeding bottles for the apes and measure medicine if some of the apes are ill. This means that the only place where Lone has any real privacy is in her bedroom.

But it is a costly affair to run such a large centre and now that Lone’s primary sponsor has filed for bankruptcy, she finds herself in great economic difficulties. In 2007 she needs 1.2 million Euros in order to run the centre. If she fails to obtain the money within the near future, she is forced to give up her life’s work.

She is left with no other choice than to leave her beloved apes to travel to some of Europe’s big cities and go begging, hoping that some of the animal welfare organisations are willing to help her. Will she be able to save the endangered organgutan?