Posted by admin on Feb 23, 2012

Can’t Save What You Don’t Know Exists

In 2001 I started a childrens’ education not-for-profit called GLOBIO, our goal was to engage kids in the world around them. After several years in East Africa working on orphaned baby African elephants it became crystal clear you can’t save what you don’t know exists. I had seen 4th and 5th grade children from downtown Nairobi who had never seen a live elephant – their national...

Posted by admin on Feb 16, 2012

Week One: In The “Land Below The Wind”

  Drove back over Mt Kinabalu yesterday into Kota Kinabalu, concluding the first official field week of the Great Ape Diaries. One of the more interesting/emotional/thought-consumed first weeks of any project in my 30-year career. Driving along (on the left-hand side) a flood of impressions flew by with each kilometer of the 300 kilometers; more than once reminding me how far I, and this project,...

Posted by gerry on Feb 12, 2012

More Than Just Orang-utans to Save

Posted by gerry on Feb 10, 2012

Oil Palm: In the end you have to ask why?

Why? Ultimately all the other journalistic “W”s point to Why. Add the others up and you define details, you illuminate pattern, you clarify cause, but in the beginning as well as the end you have to ask why? The drive from Kota Kinabalu on Borneo’s northeast coast over the southern shoulder of Mount Kinabalu descending into the lowlands eastward towards Sandakan is a bit less than 300kms,...

Posted by gerry on Feb 3, 2012

Now… how to get all this packed!

Down to the final 72 hours before “leav’n on a jet plane” for Borneo and Sumatra and the gear seems to multiply over night.  Every morning I wake up to find yet another thing that has to make it in to all these bags. Into those TWO bags if I have my way about it. And on top of that come news that TSA is confiscating litium ion batteries from shipped luggage — ERGH! “Come...

Posted by gerry on Jan 27, 2012

Great Ape Diaries Gets Social – Media

Before trekking into the wilds of Borneo and Sumatra to bring you the latest on orangutans, their habitat and the people invested in their future, we have been immersing ourselves in the cyber-world of social media – and we think we have created enough ways for all of you to follow us – regardless of your social network bias. Here’s how to follow us: Website – a portal for...

Posted by gerry on Jan 26, 2012

Save the Apes and You Save the Forests

That’s the headline that came blazing across my in-box a few mornings ago. “Save the Apes and You Save the Forests” wow, you would think in the second decade of the 21st Century this would be a no-brainer? As I ply through final logistics for the upcoming Borneo-Sumatra trip I often have the online radio streaming in the background. Occasionally a word, a soundbite filters through and I...