His job is to save orangutans from hunting, collect them, care for them and above all protect them from chainsaws that devour their forests to replace them with palm crops that provide palm oil to garnish all industrial food. and cosmetics. Karmele Llano, a Spanish veterinarian born in Bilbao, has worked 11,000 kilometers away in Borneo and Sumatra, Indonesia, for almost twenty years.
“In fact, right after I graduated, I had the opportunity to go and volunteer there to care for orangutans. What was only to be a short stay turned my life upside down, so I stayed“, she explains. Since then, she created her own NGO, International Animal Rescue, which received on November 30 the price of the BBVA foundation. This prize rewards the best biodiversity protection projects.
The organization @IAR_updates, directed by the veterinaria Karmele Llano, ha rescatado a 260 ejemplares de estos simios que han perdido su hogar en Borneo por la deforestación https://t.co/XYmxkEBFRW
– Clima y Medio Ambiente (@elpais_eco) December 15, 2021
In ten years, Karmele Llano has collected, cared for, saved and reintroduced into nature 260 great apes. It may sound like a lot but the vet says on a daily basis El Pais than “it is a drop of water “. The species is indeed endangered and 100,000 individuals have disappeared in fifteen years, ie half of them. What can we do then? “Reflect on our consumption, our lifestyles, and think more often of other living beings “, she replies to the newspaper. Monkeys, birds, fish, plants … We must consider the impact of our choices on their lives, learn about them and learn. For this, Karmele Lllano has just published a children’s book, which tells about orangutans and recalls that they share more than 98% of their DNA with ours. Ironically, in Malay, orangutan means “forest man“.