My Speech-Why we should SAVE THE ORANGUTANS

Did you know that in the last 20 years 3.5million hectares of Indonesian and Malaysian forests have been destroyed to make way for palm oil? If this keeps happening our orangutans will start to disappear. We need to stop using palm oil. So listen and you will find out what orangutans are and what they do, about palm oil and what to do to help save the orangutans.

Firstly I am going to tell you what orangutans are and what they do. Orangutans are big apes that are believed to be 7 times stronger than humans. Orangutan means Man Of The Forest, they have reddish brown hair unlike monkeys and gorillas. Orangutans sleep for 12 hours a day and every night they build their nest up high in the trees. They eat things like sap, fungus, bamboo and sometimes hunt small mammals. More than half of the baby orangutans don't make it to adults so please help save the orangutans!!

The biggest threat of orangutans is palm oil. Now I am going to talk to you about palm oil. Have you ever checked the ingredients in the food that you are buying? Now you have to because more than half the packaged food in the supermarket contains palm oil. Palm oil uses different names so look out for some of these: Vegetable oil, Cetearyl alcohol and kernal plam oil.  Palm oil is the most widely used oil on Earth, not only that but more than 1500 companies and organisations use Palm oil. Palm oil comes from the tree called African oil palm tree. Today, in the rainforests 300 soccer fields disappear an hour in order to make palm oil. So maybe you were wondering what to do to help.

Now, what can we do to help save the orangutans? You can plant a Tree in the forest or speak to a company that uses Palm oil like kit Kat and Hersheys. These will help a lot but there is also more like donating to the Orangutan outreach. You can even adopt one by searching up adopt orangutan NZ on the internet !! Please check your ingredients of the food that you are buying at the supermarket and don’t buy anything that contains palm oil.

I hope I have convinced you not to use products that contain palm oil. We have no right to kill the orangutans and if we do the future generations will not get to meet them.