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Once in a Lifetime Opportunity
A Special Message from
Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas
Dear OFI Friend,
Change is in the air, and an important deadline that could determine the fate of hundreds of wild and ex-captive orangutans is fast approaching. OFI desperately needs your help today to raise $250,000 by December 31, 2012. Here's why...
As you know, OFI has been working hard to raise funds to purchase and permanently protect thousands of acres of critical rainforest habitat in the Central Kalimantan region of Indonesia (Borneo), thereby keeping it out of the hands of timber, mining, and palm oil companies. Acre by forested acre, we have  systematically been creating a series of vast, interconnected, and biologically-diverse sanctuaries for wild orangutans, as well as a viable future home for released rehabilitated orangutans, helping to ensure an essential safety net against extinction.
However, new threats exist in Central Kalimantan and the stakes couldn't be higher!
The political landscape here--home to our Orangutan Care Center and Rawa Kuno Legacy Forest--is about to change. Depending upon the outcome of the upcoming December 2012 local elections, OFI and the orangutans who are counting on us could face a myriad of potential new obstacles from anti-conservation officials, if elected.
Intense, new competition from developers could drive land prices far beyond OFI's financial reach. Thousands of acres of critical orangutan habitat--available to OFI today--could quickly be gobbled up, chopped down, and burned to the ground to make way for 21st Century progress. The result? An inevitable invasion of logging, mining, and palm oil operations directly into the heart of OFI's growing region of interconnected orangutan sanctuaries, resulting in the permanent displacement and likely death of many orangutans as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of other species of wildlife, including the highly endangered clouded leopard.
We must move quickly and decisively today to secure the purchase of approximately 4,000 acres of strategically-located orangutan habitat. This includes key parcels within the Rawa Kuno Legacy Forest (we've secured 2,500 of the 6,400 acres thus far as well as several hundred acres of buffer zone forest) and another 1,000 acres that connect Rawa Kuno to the existing 1,000-acre protected Village Forest in Pasir Panjang. Only by owning this land outright will we be able to ensure its long-term protection.
Clearly, time is of the essence. Your support is urgently needed. Please, consider a generous and lasting year-end gift to OFI. The orangutans need your help!
With deep and abiding gratitude,
Biruté Mary Galdikas
OFI President
P.S. When you donate by credit card online, be sure to write "For Land Purchases" in the online "Special Instructions" box.
Or send your check, made payable to OFI, to Orangutan Foundation International, 824 S. Wellesley Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90049 USA. Indicate "For Land Purchases" on check memo line.
Thank you!
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