Lord of the Trees is an initiative of environmental experts, scientists, engineers, animal protection agencies and indigenous communities that combine the knowledge and experience to facilitate reforestation projects worldwide.

The forestry and ecosystem restoration projects help to rehabilitate deforested land and expand wildlife habitat areas. All that is done by pre-programmed drones that are replanting seedpods into the ground. Drones are used in areas disrupted by agriculture or mining and destroyed by bushfires. Once on-site drones loaded with different seed types and equipped with advanced deployment features distribute the seedpods to affected areas. It allows restoring ecosystems on a vast scale and in a very short time comparing to manual seed planting. One drone pilot operating five drones can plant 432,000 seed pods in just 12 hours at a rate of 2 seedpods per drone per second, one person on foot would have to work full-time every day for a year to do the same job. Thanks to this technology, developed by a team of industrial designers and the help of the global community Lord of the Trees can achieve their goal of planting millions of trees around the world and creating new forests.

The Orangutan Project is a team of passionate wildlife experts, committed to protecting Critically Endangered orangutans. They have been working for over 20 years to save orangutans from extinction. It’s a vibrant, fast-growing and effective not-for-profit organisation that supports a variety of projects focused on protecting remaining fragmented orangutan populations including fighting deforestation and habitat loss. The projects funded by The Orangutan Project not only include direct orangutan conservation, such as orangutan rescue, rehabilitation and release programs but also forest habitat preservation and restoration, education, research and local community partnerships.

Within the next ten years, The Orangutan Project hopes to increase the number of wild orangutans under permanent protection to 8,000 to ensure all distinct populations of all subspecies of orangutan survive indefinitely. This requires them to help secure 450,000 acres of prime lowland forest and protect it with 180 Wildlife Protection Rangers.

The objectives of The Orangutan Project have many flow-on effects that both protect other Critically Endangered species, such as the Sumatran tiger, elephant and rhino, as well as indigenous and local communities.

Visit www.theorangutanproject.org to find out how you can adopt an orphaned orangutan or support their game-changing work to protect rainforests.

Orangutans are the most intelligent creatures on the Earth after humans, and they adapt to their environmental conditions by passing on culture from generation to generation. Their extinction is an individual story of horror as they are macheted and burnt alive as agricultural pest. Almost 80% of orangutan habitat has disappeared in the last 20 years, and we are losing over 6,000 orangutans a year.

Extinction in the wild is likely in the next 10 years for Sumatran orangutans and soon after for Bornean orangutans. Both species are classified as Critically Endangered according to the International UNION FOR Conservation of Nature (www.iucn.org)

Orangutan rainforest habitats are vanishing at an unprecedented pace as a result of deforestation and clearing of the land for pulp paper and palm oil plantations, with the remaining forests degraded by drought and forest fires. Every hour 300 football fields of precious remaining forest are ploughed to the ground across South East Asia to make way for monoculture plantations including palm oil. Palm oil is used in everything from food to soap and is found in over half all packaged items on our supermarket shelves.

Poaching orangutan infants and hunting for meat also threatens the species. Mothers are often killed for their babies, which are sold on the black market as pets. Rescued infants are rehabilitated at orangutan rescue centres, if you are willing to help, you can adopt an orangutan orphan here www.theorangutanproject.org/adopt/

Our contribution