The+Problem+&+Ways+to+Help


 * Why are orangutans becoming endangered so quickly?**

People in Sumatra and Borneo, where orangutans live in the wild, are cutting down the rainforests. The rainforests are being cut down to plant more palm oil trees. Palm oil trees are used to harvest palm oil, an ingredient in 50% of all packaged foods. Instead of letting palm oil trees grow naturally, companies have become greedy and are planting them in place of other trees in order to make more money. Because of this, orangutans no longer have the habitat they need to survive. Twenty years ago, the population of wild orangutans was 300,000 and now it is only 55,000. If this continues, orangutans will be extinct within the next 20 years.

To help, you can do several things:
 * 1) You could go to [] to donate to this worthy cause.
 * 2) You could look for a CSPO label on various packaged products. CSPO stands for Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, which means that the palm oil has been harvested naturally, without destroying rainforests. Using palm oil responsibly means that companies are not cutting down existing trees and replacing them with palm oil trees.
 * 3) Spread the word. Share this website with other people who are concerned about orangutans.
 * 4) Write letters to companies that are not using palm oil responsibly like Cargill and Kraft.
 * 5) Research more about this topic, so you can be even more informed.

In an effort to try and help with the problems described above, we set up cans in each classroom in our school to collect money to donate to the Orangutan Foundation International. We ended up raising **$500** to help save the orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra! Specifically, we purchased **4 acres** of land that will now be preserved, and we **fostered an orangutan** named Lear (click on his name to read about Lear and see a picture)!! Below is a picture of one of the labels we made to put on our collection cans:



Below you can see a picture of students counting all of the money we collected: Our principal also posted a message to the school about our project!