What's New with Sustainable Palm Oil?

Do you have the newest version of the Orangutan Friendly Shopping Guide?  One of the most recent changes is that General Mills has joined the RSPO (Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil), which means brands like General Mills, Cascadian Farm, Progresso, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Green Giant, Hamburger Helper, and Nature Valley are orangutan friendly choices!  The most up to date version of the shopping guide can be found at http://www.cmzoo.org/conservation/palmOilCrisis/. 

You can make orangutan friendly choices every time you shop at the grocery store by buying only products listed on the shopping guide.  The list of RSPO-member companies continues to grow, which is great news for orangutans and other animals that live in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.  The RSPO is a multi-stakeholder group that is moving the palm oil industry toward sustainability.  To learn more about the RSPO, visit their website: www.rspo.org  

Around the country, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s Palm Oil Awareness Team continues to spread the message about how to make a difference for wild orangutans.  In the past, the Team has focused primarily on speaking at orangutan-related conferences.  This year, our Team has also been invited to speak at professional conferences for other species affected by the palm oil crisis.  In June, Mandy, one of our orangutan keepers, traveled to North Carolina to speak at the first Gibbon Husbandry conference.  Gibbons inhabit some of the same rainforests in which orangutans live, so the deforestation caused by unsustainable production of palm oil affects gibbons as well.  Coming up this month, our Animal Care Manager, Dina, will be traveling to Oregon to speak for the third year in a row at the annual Orangutan Husbandry Conference.  In September Dina and Tracey, our Vice President, will be hosting a booth at the American Zoological Association (AZA) National Conference in Arizona, where they will be sharing with zoo professionals from all over the United States ways to help guests at their zoos make informed shopping choices and make a difference for wild orangutans and other wildlife. Lastly for this year, in November, Dina will be traveling to California, where she has been invited to speak at the annual Elephant Managers Association conference.  Elephants are another of the many species affected by unsustainable palm oil. 

The Team will continue to work hard to make a difference for wild orangutans by raising awareness about the palm oil crisis and encouraging people to take action by providing tools and information that will allow them to make globally responsible consumer choices.  Join us in making a difference!

Baka-keri: The Eternal Ape

Many of our frequent guests are probably already familiar with Baka-keri, our adult male Sumatran orangutan.  No, he’s not the orangutan who gives “kisses”; that’s Tujoh.  Baka is the handsome, dreadlocked guy who was a great dad to Makan and now Godek. 

We frequently get questions about Baka’s name because the word “baka” means stupid in Japanese.  Baka is one of our smartest orangutans and anything but stupid.  He was named at his birth zoo, the Calgary Zoo, which follows similar naming rules as Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.  We try to give animals names from languages native to their country of origin.  Orangutans are native to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in Indonesia and Malaysia.  Baka’s full name is Baka-keri - Baka in Indonesian means “eternal”, and the Indonesian word for “ape” is keras.

  

Orangutans are highly endangered in their native rainforests due palm oil production, so right now they are far from eternal.  Click here to see how you can help them when you visit the grocery store.

Creatively Cool Great Apes

It has been a hot summer, and just like humans, the apes love a cool treat on a warm day. We have various ways of presenting a frozen treat and some of the ones we use frequently are: juice frozen in applesauce jars and placed on top of their skylight mesh, frozen whole fruit, and ice or juice cubes spread in their exhibit. 

When we have time, though, we like to get more creative and make treats novel and fun for the animals. We can make “ape-size popsicles” with a five-gallon bucket and some chain. By freezing the chain in the middle of the juice and fruit, we can hang it in their exhibit and give them hours of enjoyment. Recently, we made some “ice rings” by freezing juice and fruit in a tub with an empty round container taking up the middle. These rings were then hung in the orangutan exhibits and they spent a long time cooling off with them.

Some of our apes take cool fun into their own hands, by making their water run into the exhibit to play in. Stay cool out there!

Quarters for Conservation

Cheyenne Mountain zoo is one of only 10 zoos in the U.S. currently participating in the Quarters for Conservation (Q4C) program. There are also 10 zoos hoping to begin participating very soon.  

The Q4C idea was started by Zoo Boise, but was taken to the next level here at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo with on-site voting, fours year ago. The program raises funds by contributing $.25 of every zoo admission and a portion of memberships to conservation work around the globe. Half is allocated to ongoing flagship conservation projects like the black-footed ferret, Mexican gray wolf, and Wyoming toad breeding programs, and the other half is divided between six select conservation programs based on your votes.

 The selection process for the year’s featured animals begins with zoo employees submitting a proposal to champion a program. A Q4C committee, consisting of staff members from various departments, reviews the proposals based on strict criteria and selects just six programs. At the end of the year a percentage of the funds for the six programs is allocated based on your voting using a special token when you visit the zoo. Every visit and every vote counts.  

Here are the most recent Q4C Programs:

-         Protecting wild African vultures

-         Rescuing amphibians in Panama

-         Raising and Protecting wild African penguins

-         Releasing endangered gibbons back to the wild

-         Saving wild Amur leopards and tigers

-         Protecting wild orangutans and their forest habitat

Since 2008, Q4C has raised over $400,000. You’re changing the world one quarter at a time! Click here to learn more about each of the projects listed above.

 

Gummy Vitamins Aren’t Just For Kids!

It’s been reported that nearly half of all U.S. adults take a daily vitamin regiment to make up for the vitamins we are lacking in our diet. In fact, according to a recent USDA report, most Americans are consuming too few fruits and vegetables, high-fiber whole grains, seafood, and low-fat milk and dairy products. All of which are crucial to ensuring that we’re getting essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Humans are not the only ones who use vitamins to balance out their diets; animals need a little balancing every now and then as well.

Our gorilla troop is unique. They have transitioned to a chow-free diet over the past year to a diet consisting of salad (the biggest portion of all Cheyenne Mountain Zoo animals) supplemented by several key vitamins. Below are examples of the vitamins and supplements our orangutans and gorillas receive along with a brief explanation of why they are beneficial.

• Emcelle tocopherol or vitamin E is used as a basic supplement in the gorillas’ diets.
• Flax oil is included in the gorillas’ daily regiment to help keep their skin healthy.
• Our silverback gorilla, Rafiki, is given cod liver oil on a daily basis to help keep his heart healthy.
• Calcium is traditionally given to nursing moms and orangutan females on birth control, to make sure they are getting their required intake.
• Childrens multivitamins are given to all gorillas due to their chow free diet. Godek, our youngest orangutan, is on the multivitamin as well because he is a growing young animal.
• Sumagu, Godek’s mother, receives a Men's One a Day and folic acid because she is still lactating. We use Men’s One a Day for apes because the high levels of iron found in multivitamins formulated for women are not the most beneficial for great apes.
• A Super B complex is given to Juju, one of our Western Lowland gorillas, on a daily basis for normal function of her nervous system. A while back she was curling her toes and limping, these symptoms disappeared with the addition of Super B complex to her vitamin regiment.
• Probiotic or ultimate flora is given to Rafiki and Juju, Western Lowland Gorillas, for inconsistent stools.

The apes receive the vitamins & supplements listed above in a variety of concoctions depending on the consistency of the supplement, the animal, their preferences and their diet restrictions.  Apple sauce and sugar-free fruit drinks are pretty helpful. Roxie, one of our Western Lowland gorillas, will only take her vitamin E with a peanut butter sandwich.  Most animals take the kids' chewable vitamins without any issues, except Kwisha, a Western Lowland gorilla, does not like the childrens' gummy vitamins!

Most zoo animals get vitamins and minerals in their chows, biscuits and grains. Vitamins are also included in some prepared canned foods given to the golden lion tamarins and marmosets.  The meat for our carnivores is specially formulated with vitamins and minerals, and the frogs and toads get their vitamins sprinkled on crickets and other insects.

Un-Coated Crickets

Coated Crickets

Our animals’ vitamin regiment is always changing depending on health issues, pregnancy or possible pregnancy, if the animal is lactating, or laying eggs.  Our vet staff works with our animal keepers to form the best combination of vitamins for each individual animal based on their current health needs.

Please visit out “Bear Necessities” page for more information about how you can help our animals receive their daily dose of vitamins and supplements for as little as $10. 

Swinging in the Rainforest: A Night with Orangutans

Join us for a night with the orangutans! AAZK (American Association of Zookeepers) is hosting the second annual Swinging in the Rainforest orangutan fundraiser.



Be some of the first to learn what Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's team, Tracey Gazibara, Dina Bredahl, and Mandy Hollingsworth, discovered about orangutan conservation on their recent trip to Indonesia and Malaysia (see the Palm Oil Blog for updates from the trip while they were there). Watch the orangutans perform their natural behavior show and an orangutan painting session. Bid on some of your favorite orangutan paintings, photographs and gifts from Indonesia in our silent auction. Activities for kids will include coloring sheets, making enrichment for the primates and practicing orangutan nest building skills. Maggie Moos will be serving up their new palm oil free flavor "Swinging Orangutan Shindig" in support of this journey and the conservation of orangutan habitat. 25 cents of each scoop goes directly to orangutan conservation through the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's Quarters for Conservation program.

The event will take place in Primate World on July 10, 2010 from 6:30-9:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the door the night of the event or online at from our events page. Hope you’ll swing on by and see us!

Cost:
$25 per adult
$40 per couple
$10 per child

Buy Swinging in the Rainforest tickets now! All proceeds benefit orangutan conservation.