Journey into the Wild with The Orangutan Conservation Project's Leif Cocks

In this episode, conservationist, author and founder of The Orangutan Project, Leif Cocks. 

Leif is a tireless conservationist who seems to be involved in innumerable conservation projects throughout Southeast Asia, but most notably The Orangutan Project, which he founded in 1998.

We talk about Leif’s path to conservation, which began early on with an interest in animals and nature and was formalized through his experiences in higher education and work in husbandry and small population biology at Perth Zoo. 

What really stands out in this conversation is Leif’s passion for and commitment to being a defender of the natural world and all the beings living in it. 

We get into orangutan conservation, including what he views as the pillars of successful orangutan reintroduction - physical health, mental health, social skills, and forest skills.

Leif describes how  The Orangutan Project operates, emphasizing the importance of collective action and going far beyond just orangutan conservation into preservation of entire ecosystems and supporting local human communities living therein.

He also deftly describes the real challenges involved in conserving the rainforest’s megafauna, from supporting the endearingly “bat shit crazy” folks who manage to translocate elephants to safe areas, to getting people emotionally connected to the species and ecosystems that need saving.

I really appreciated Leif’s ability to unpack the nitty gritty of running a successful conservation effort, and the efforts they’ve made to assess the progress of the various initiatives they’ve sponsored. 

We close out the conversation with some moral questions about personhood in nonhumans and the value of captivity for conservation at places like zoos.

Other topics we discuss:

• orangutans and conservation translocations
• animal culture
• ecotourism to connect people with nature
• Tinder meets Uber for elephant conservation!

Notable quotes from Leif:

• on orangutans - "they're self aware persons that don't belong in captivity"
• conservation needs "loving kindness and intelligent action"
• on conservation challenges - "For every complex problem in the world there’s a simple solution which is absolutely wrong”

If you want to find out more about Leif, his personal story and his work, you can find him at leifcocks.org or through The Orangutan Project website. He’s also the author of three books: Orangutans and their Battle for Survival, Orangutans: My Cousins, My Friends, and Finding Our Humanity. And check out episode #14 in season 1 of the Talking Apes podcast.

Check out his socials at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.

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A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

Transcript

Andrew: 0:00

After the tune an interview with conservationist author and founder of the Orangutan Project Leif Cocks. Hello everyone and welcome back for another installment of the PrimateCast. I’m your host, Andrew MacIntosh of Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Center and the podcast is brought to you by the CICASP at Kyoto University’s Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior. In

Andrew: 0:05

this episode, I share my conversation with conservationist, author and founder of the Orangutan Project, Leif Cocks. Thanks also to Audrey Love for the suggestion and introductions. So,

Andrew: 0:05

Leif is a tireless conservationist who seems to be involved in innumerable conservation projects throughout Southeast Asia, but most notably The Orangutan Project, which he founded in 1998. We

Andrew: 0:05

talk about Leif’s path to conservation, which began early on with an interest in animals and nature and was formalized through his experiences in higher education and work in husbandry and small population biology at Perth Zoo. What

Andrew: 0:05

really stands out in this conversation is Leif’s passion for and commitment to being a defender of the natural world and all the beings living in it. We

Andrew: 0:05

get into orangutan conservation, including what he views as the pillars of successful orangutan reintroduction - physical health, mental health, social skills, and forest skills. Leif

Andrew: 0:05

describes how The Orangutan Project operates, emphasizing the importance of collective action and going far beyond just orangutan conservation into preservation of entire ecosystems and supporting local human communities living therein. He

Andrew: 0:05

also deftly describes the real challenges involved in conserving the rainforest’s megafauna, from supporting the endearingly “bat shit crazy” folks who manage to translocate elephants to safe areas, to getting people emotionally connected to the species and ecosystems that need saving. You might also notice how quotable he is! I

Andrew: 0:05

really appreciated Leif’s ability to unpack the nitty gritty of running a successful conservation effort, and the efforts they’ve made to assess the progress of the various initiatives they’ve sponsored. We

Andrew: 0:05

close out the conversation with some moral questions about personhood in nonhumans and the value of captivity for conservation at places like zoos. If

Andrew: 0:05

you want to find out more about Leif, his personal story and his work, you can find him at leifcocks. org or through The Orangutan Project website. He’s also the author of three books: Orangutans and their battle for survival, orangutans my cousins my friends, and finding our humanity. And check out episode #14 in season 1 of the Talking Apes podcast. With

Andrew: 0:05

all that said, here is my conversation with Leif Cocks. Thinking about your path to becoming a conservationist. What did that look like? How did you first get interested in the study or protection of animals?

Leif: 0:42

I've already had a strong interest in working with or, more importantly for, animals from even early childhood. Naturally, i went out to university and got my zoology biology degree. Then I started working at a zoo and had the opportunity to work with 15 orangutans and discovered that they're self-aware persons that don't belong in captivity. In many ways they're far more noble form of humanity than human beings, of course, very quickly discovered that they were being driven to extinction in the most horrific ways that we can imagine. My postgraduate research has been in primate behavior and then my master's on orangutans. Then, of course, my spare time was going into their forest learning about rescuing them. Then, over time, my out of work helping orangutans conserv ing their forest became my full-time job and working with and trying to increase the welfare of Irangatanks captivity became a small proportion of my work. Obviously, culminating in the end of my career is starting to bring some of the Irangatanks that I could from the zoo back to the wild and we introducing them back into an ecosystem that we had already been funding the protection of.

Andrew: 2:23

That last point. It's something I definitely want to come back to you as well. I think it's pretty rare case still of this was a zoo housed Irangatank that was eventually introduced into the wild. Was that specific orangutan born in the wild?

Leif: 2:38

Well, three ultimately came from the zoo back to the wild.

Leif: 2:45

In fact, the first Irangatank, the zoo born Irangatank back to the wild, was Tamara, and her grandmother, puan, was well-born. She was basically the second generation of zoo born Irangatanks that eventually then had the opportunity to go back to the wild.

Andrew: 3:07

It's incredible to think about Now, when you hear a lot about reintroduction or introduction projects. it's pretty hard to find the right set of circumstances that allow success for that to happen. One of them, though, is pretty clear, is that if animals were born in the wild and then later brought into a kind of artificial setting, it's a little easier to reintroduce them.

Leif: 3:32

It's kind of a little bit of a misnomer, depending on what animal you're talking about.

Leif: 3:36

Let's go to the full end of the spectrum. If you want to reintroduce a cat, you don't have to do too much. They're like 90% instinct, 10% learn. That's why cats just go fell everywhere around the world. You don't have to be an expert. Your average house owner lets a cat have a reintroduction project that's going to be fairly successful.

Leif: 3:58

Then, when we're talking about, let's say, on the other end of the spectrum, intelligent animals adapt primarily to the environment through culture, not by natural selection.

Leif: 4:10

They have long maternal periods, few offspring and vacant brains, very long instinct. At the end, through culture. Let's say an orangutan is born in the wild and six months of age the mother was killed and eaten and is taken off to ride a bicycle around the stage in Thailand, then eventually gets rescued and come back. Is that more adapted or to the environment than, let's say, an orangutan who was born in captivity, natural raise and had all the mental health and support from his mother? He's critically important mental health. Then it's been given all the training and support and learn about trees, learn about foraging and that sort of stuff. If one can get more likely to survive than the other, i'd suggest that just simply being wild born, although that certainly can be a factor, if not necessarily the be or end, or when you're talking about intelligent animals that adapt to the environment through culture, not natural selection. It's not the be or end or of retraction.

Andrew: 5:27

You mentioned there were three that you were involved with that were eventually reintroduced. What were then the kinds of things that at the time in the zoo, you and others working on that project were trying to make sure happened for those orangutans for their release or reintroduction to eventually be successful? You mentioned being raised obviously naturally by a mother is an important part of that. What other things were?

Leif: 5:53

I think there's actually four pillars, four foundations maybe a better way of visualizing of orangutan in the industry. First is physical health. If the orangutan has got one arm missing and is sick or contains some computer or disease, it's not suitable for reintroduction, for survival and survival of others. The next building block is mental health. You know orangutans, we have their mothers killed in front of them, eaten and traumatized and tortured. Their little brains are destroyed. We know with humans, mental health is necessary for success. Their little minds have to be repaired. In the case of, let's say, tamara, the first zoo born orangutan, she was mother, raised, suckled and then, at the natural age of dispersion, she went on a journey to mentally, emotionally prepare. The third building block is social skills and social health. Can you interact and know how to interact with orangutan, other orangutans properly, get along, learn from them, get cultural cues and information? That's also extremely important.

Leif: 7:06

Tamara already had the first three building blocks. The most key thing that she didn't have is forest skills, the last platform of orangutan reintroduction. Before she even left the zoo, we enclosed a huge fig tree. Fig trees are the number one important tree and important for orangutan survival because they're all year round food source. The density of fig trees is directly related to the density that orangutan population can be at. So she lived in a thick tree and we fed her in a thick tree and we started speaking to her Indonesian and all the things that we started to do, you know. so the transition was even starting there.

Leif: 7:54

And then when she went to Bukitigapulu, where she basically was part of a program to reestablish the population there when the stints in the 1930s, we kept an occasion in jungle for two weeks, and so she can get traumatized all the sounds and see if things go wrong. But what we did? also, we went out every day and collected all the different food sources that she could find in the forest. So she was already eating the forest fruits before she came out, you know. and then all you know, and then you know she already been living in the tree.

Leif: 8:26

So first, issue out, she made the night nest at night and she started foraging the food. Obviously there were three years of following her and helping her transition and supporting her with food when she couldn't find enough, until she became qualified to be independent. But you know, so it was an intense, say long, journey, with summer rangotangs, for example, the ex-pets were finding are too damaged to really have the ability to survive in a while. But even then, we're actually at the moment we're designing and building in Sumatra and opening close to the rangotangs to live in the rainforest. but we feel and support them and their offspring will then become wild.

Leif: 9:17

And so they get the best welfare outcome and also the genes are not lost to the conservation of the species. So I guess maybe I'm just highlighting that last bit because just highlight, it's a long term process. You know reintroduction, as I said, you know things like cats aside, it's not a release the cage you see in a documentary, then the animal runs off. That is just the tip of the iceberg. You've got to protect the area, you've got to secure the area, you've got to make sure the animals prepare and, most likely with animals such as the rain, you've got to provide long term ongoing support to transition to the being independent in the wild.

Andrew: 10:05

You know, one of my colleagues, formerly of Kyoto University, now at Kyoto City Zoo, she Yuumi Aminashi, conducted a study of bed building by chimpanzees in captivity.

Andrew: 10:18

This was at, I believe, at Kyoto City Zoo and found that so some of the older chimpanzees had been originally came from the wild or had mothers that were in the wild, and these chimpanzees, even later in their age, are later in their life, are building beds, so as chimpanzees do. But some of the kind of chimpanzees that were born in captivity and don't have any experience with a mother who, you know, raised them and had also come from captivity or had a mother that was in captivity. So you see, the cultural transmission of these behaviors or the memories of the chimpanzees that came from the wild that have them. And I was just wondering in that context, like bed building is something that's quite important for chimpanzees in the wild in order to satisfy their kind of naturalistic behaviors. But what are maybe some examples of things that you look for in the orangutans in, the, say, pre-release phase? like the things that maybe that looks like they're pretty ready and things that maybe they need to pick up still, and then how might you build a program to teach them those things?

Leif: 11:20

Yeah, no, it's all very interesting And there's lots of factors into play. First thing is to say culture is just not this standalone thing. That culture is how we adapt to the environment, for humans and animals, and if you start to try to solidify a culture, it becomes maladjusted to people who want to hold a culture at some time in the past. You want things back in the 1950s, you know, but it's a different world, and so your culture becomes dysfunctional And you long for the 1950s where your culture that you're stuck in was actually functional. And so, similarly, chimpanzees in captivity.

Leif: 12:07

There's no use doing it. They have no cultural relevance, and culture that doesn't have relevance to the environment must be dropped and new cultures must be taken up. However, we don't have unlimited plasticity in culture development, if that makes sense, and also our brains are certainly, especially in the early years, are formed in ways that meet the cultural requirements. That makes sense. So you can if you. For example, we could reintroduce Tamara and the other rangatang facts to wall, because we had a rangatang live in a natural social system, ergonomic design and clothes using that sort of stuff, but an orangutan came from another zoo which was so far away, too far away, from the wild environment. That was not possible because even their brains that makes sense is triggered and developed to survive in a cage in captivity.

Leif: 13:06

So we see that with humans, humans, often, you know they're living in a very high stress environment. When they're young, they have, you know, epigenetic triggers in their brain which makes them nervous and caught, you know, and cause, you know, and frightened, And you know, and, and that goes on for lifetime, because it is a great adaptation. If you're living in a very, you know, stressful, dangerous environment, but then want that dangerous removed, you're stuck, you're stuck in that environment. So I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, there's, there's a whole host of things that need to be applied.

Leif: 13:41

But with orangutans, one of the things that certainly I've discovered, i found quite surprising, is, gee, they're just damn smart And gee, they're just figure things out. It's like you know. I mean, you know, tomorrow made a nest. The first night Everyone said, oh, you can never make a nest. Well, she's, she's smart And she's got four hands and she's seen other orangutans just those two orangutans make this. It wasn't like my God took me, like took like 10 years to learn. You know how to do that. You've got four hands, you're in a tree and you're seeing someone else do it once. There, i, i, you know, I want to go to sleep on this nice mattress, you know and one of the things. And so and we're seeing it with many other reintroduced orangutans, you know, sometimes you go no, no one's taught them that. They haven't learned enough. Anybody you could, how could they? but they just figured out.

Leif: 14:33

And one of the things I would say what's so remarkable about and this is definitely chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are more like me, i guess. You know you give me some sort of electronic thing, i just keep pressing the buttons until it works, you know. But you know, orangutans are the ones that actually read the user manual, and so orangutan has been perceived as less smart because they just sit there, run their commute simulations and sleep, or cortex Don't do anything and then act once and do it. Extremely good at figure, seeing that and taking the time to do that. So that's one of the at least from my perspective, one of the most remarkable things. You know, i've seen the orangutan in the reintroduction project. Yeah.

Andrew: 15:18

I've communicated with a number of people who work with orangutans, whether it's in cognitive studies or In zoos, and pretty much everyone says the same thing They're very deliberating animals that can definitely surprise you almost endlessly with what they're capable of.

Leif: 15:34

Oh yeah, they're incredibly smart. Of course, to be smart and have a big brain, to be smart for no reason is very stupid because it's high calorie consuming organ And if it's not contributing to your survival, it's not an asset at all, it's a liability. So all animals, including us, are intelligent in ways which suit us survival and reproduction, and so this is why I would say rangatang is a dancer in the classroom, but Juni is in the rainforest And from a rangatang perspective, we idiots I'm sure they look at us and go why don't you have that temple special map immediately where every bit of food in the overtime space is kept? because you're an idiot. They can't understand why we're so stupid, because they're intelligent in their way. But we are arrogant and we always compare And this is culturally between humans as well. We compare by our own standards, and so, yeah, rangatang is very much the geniuses of the rainforest, so we should never underestimate them in their ability to learn, thrive and survive.

Andrew: 16:45

So, before getting into then the orangutan project and all the conservation work you've been doing, just to come back to something I pinned earlier, which was the transition from working in zoos doing graduate studies, where was it that you first worked in the zoo?

Leif: 17:05

In Perth West Australia.

Andrew: 17:08

It was in Perth? So what was the transition from a zoo setting to? did you go from there to doing graduate study, or was it the other way around?

Leif: 17:17

No, i mean I started. I already had a degree in zoology, biology, you know, up in university. But you know my postgraduate research in other primates just happened while I was working with them. So I didn't have an ambition to get a postgraduate diploma or get a master's. Those vehicles are used to discover, find out information I needed to help those animals. So it wasn't, you know, like this parallel thing that had no relationship with it, and also starting the rangatang project in 1998. Again, it's not. was this? I decided to start a conservation organisation. It was about solving the well, solving a problem of a rangatang survival of the species, but also then dovetailed in my ambition of the rangatang actually looking after going back to the world. And first of all we had to support wildlife protection units.

Leif: 18:21

We had the support and the rangatang reintroduction site, and so these things all had to happen which wasn't going to be funded by a zoo To allow, you know, the welfare of the rangatang to also be included. So it's always been a holistic approach. Then you know, then included, and then the rangatang are directly looking after.

Andrew: 18:48

So the orangutan project, so 1988, you say so it's, it's, it's getting on there in terms of years and still looks like it's going quite strong. But in the beginning you said it was just something that had to happen in order to do the things that you were working on. But I think it also takes a kind of person to make something like that happen. So how, how was it, from your perspective, setting up this conservation? I mean, it's ultimately a conservation organization, but was it something that you, you know, spent? obviously, you must have spent a lot of time building, but what was the process like, from you were at the zoo and building this conservation project.

Leif: 19:26

I mean it gets a certain aspects to it. One is you don't work if you're doing what you love and what you believe in. So you know that's that's certain aspects. So how do you get the energy? and well, it's. It's what I believe in, is what I love to do, you know, to help others and and make this happen.

Leif: 19:48

The second thing is as human beings, i firmly believe as individuals, we're pretty useless. You know that's why you know British petroleum envelops develop the carbon footprint One of the hundred companies destroying the planet. You know. You know you give 90 cents on climate change. Why they develop carbon footprint? because they want you to take in your your the problem. You go home and work out your carbon credit and do your little thing while we make a lot of money. You know destroying the rest of the planet.

Leif: 20:19

And so you know those destroying the planet and those who want to save it and save the rain for us and save rain tanks also have to understand is as individuals with pretty much power. And so my skill is in collectivisation. You know get bringing other people together, supporting other people and collectivising together. And I, you know that's kind of been how I always work, you know, from when I was a zookeeper, i was a shop steward, you know, when I was a curator out on the species management program committee. So I've always been a very firm believer of collectivisation to achieve things. And so yeah, so 998, we collectivise, you know people that would help with different skills, and then we moved and we grow from there.

Andrew: 21:13

Yeah, so at the moment, what was the specific problems you were hoping to solve when you started the Irangentan project? So you mentioned a site for introductions. What was the actual context there?

Leif: 21:25

Well, it's all kind of inclusive. Now, the first thing is to say from a strategic perspective is Irangentan may be the centre of my love, but not the boundary of, and I don't believe we can create a better world, even for Irangentan, without constituting all other living beings and providing a wingless solution for the living beings, that's all the other biodiversity, the tigers, the elephants which was. Those projects were created as well because they were falling outside the umbrella of Irangentan conservation And we've got farce for people looking after people, developing agricultural systems for them to prosper under the rainforest canopy. And you know, saving rainforest is one of the most strategic things and cost effective things we can do to help save the planet, mitigate climate change, you know, and help the long term economy of Indonesia as a country. So these are all win-win solutions. Doesn't make sense. So it's always been. The vision has always been holistic. Doesn't make sense. Do what you're good at and do where your skills are at, but hold the holistic vision of something that's benefit to all living beings.

Leif: 22:38

How that manifests as a particular strategy is our strategy to save up to eight ecosystems of right type, shape and size of rainforests that all different species, subspecies and orangutans can survive the extinction crisis. So it has to be the right type, shape and size, otherwise the rainforest itself is not sustainable or collapsing on itself, and certainly the populations of orangutans it can hold the unsustainable collapse in itself. Of course, the two animals which are falling outside of the umbrella were the types and elephants, because even if we save all the remaining ecosystems, there's no sustained population of tigers in our future. There's no sustainable population of smart elephants. They have to be secured in small numbers in the ecosystem and then managed over generations by transferring genes and in particular, males, between the populations. And that's, of course, because my last job at the zoo is a small population biologist managing small zoo populations and genetics. And so that's where again it dovetails in the sense of for some species going to have to be actively managed for several generations until, hopefully, sometime in the future, we start rewilding the planet to become more sustainable.

Leif: 23:58

But in the meantime, while we're managing that, we do have the opportunity to save the last viable ecosystems for orangutans and rainforests in the next 10 years, which I call the most important 10 years in human history because it's intriguing to climate change, because destruction of rainforest causes climate change, but the feedback loop is. Climate change is causing droughts, rising temperatures, less productivity in the rainforest, causing sea levels of rising to inundate lowland coastal peace swamps, which is primary rain tank habitat. So these things are all interlinked. So we not only have to save rain tanks and rain for us, and that helps climate change and the long-term viability of Indonesia as an economic system, but we also need the whole world to get on board and save the planet, and so the planet's not providing massive feedback loop which will destroy everything that we're wishing to create.

Andrew: 24:59

Yeah, i mean, obviously that's quite the quagmire of issues to kind of unpack for people, but you mentioned umbrellas, so orangutans. I wanted to ask this question of you. So in conservation, obviously there are a few key concepts, like umbrella species being one of them, where if you kind of target one species, it may and its protection, then obviously you can protect any species that fall within, for example, the habitat it lives in. Then there's also other concepts like flagship species, and I think orangutan qualifies as a flagship species as well as something we can all get behind. It's a charismatic animal. So you started preface that by saying it's not only about orangutans, but obviously you have a passion for orangutans and they're incredible animals. But what do you see as the major in terms of orangutans, as umbrellas and perhaps as flagship species as well? what are the advantages of focusing on orangutans?

Leif: 26:02

Well, because orangutans are a large body, large brain animal and a widely distributed in the rainforest living semi-sorrier lifestyles, you have to have very large areas to support them. But let's say you've got monkeys and gibbons and squirrels. If you can save a viable population of orangutan, there is a viable population of them. Because they live in such greater numbers, because they're small size within the rainforest, you don't have to, in a sense, worry too much about them because they'll come along for a free ride. If you're protecting the habitat and the viable ecosystem, they're going to be okay. It's a megafauna which you're going to go first And of course, as I described, is unfortunately today and for the foreseeable future, with animals which even need even greater area, and the two ones we can highlight are tigers and elephants.

Leif: 27:04

It's already too late for them to have viable populations in one area. But we do have a plan and we're doing it now where we're saving herds of 120, 150 elephants in these ecosystems And when the males disperse and they leave trying to find the next herd, they get killed And they have a coastal pest or, for the tusk, what we're doing is we're paying and employing people to put them on trucks and drive them to the next ecosystem. So I call it. It's a cross between tinder and uber, but for elephants, to make sure they're safe and they get to the next ecosystem, and this has been done successfully. But we know the system works?

Andrew: 27:51

How many people do you need to employ in order to move a single elephant, for example?

Leif: 27:57

A dozen And you all have to ba t shit crazy.

Leif: 28:05

Big, dangerous animals trying to get it on the truck I'm a bit flippant there, but the real term, of course, is brave And you all know what they're doing, and luckily we do. In our network have vets and rangers and our field manager, alex Mocombecker, the international ranking field manager. It was an immense experience And so, with everything, we've got the plan and, within our network of collectivization of people, we have the skills. Unfortunately, at the moment, the rate determining step which is holding us back is funding having enough money to be able to achieve the vision in time.

Andrew: 28:57

So if I look on the website of the Arangutan project, i pulled up an infographic that people listening won't be able to see, but I think it was focusing on, maybe the kind of successes that you've had over the years, and one thing it also includes is different kinds of areas of conservation that you're working on. So you have forest protection, then you have the release projects and monitoring, and you have also rescue, rehabilitation and release And you have outreach as well to educate and empower people for conservation and wildlife. So maybe if you could just summarize the kind of structure of the Arangutan project and how you kind of engage in all of those different activities collectivizing seems to be a key term here,

Leif: 29:46

Collectivize, if you want to start your own organization. Compete against the other guys and this guy's. I don't want this guy to be Mr, i want to be Mr Orangutan. So this is how it goes, and so most the energy and emotional energy is going into fighting the other organizations and people , and so what we want to do is go beyond human nature to a loving beyond that. So we cooperate and we work with all others.

Leif: 30:21

The first thing is to say why that's on the website is because that's what I care about And we are what you measure. That makes sense. Okay, how much money were you raised and how much publicity we get, and that sort of stuff. I care about. How many orangutans were saved, how much forest we're protecting, how many elephants were protecting? Those are the things that really matter. Those are the things I want to measure, to understand our progress, and we have a range of activities to do them.

Leif: 30:48

But I'm not going to, in a sense, purport which activities good or bad, or better or worse, because that will give you the misunderstanding information And this is why a lot of money is wasted, like we get a lot. For example, if the trend is planted tree and you get in a day by people who want to plant a tree, you go well, actually I don't need that And actually sometimes it's not very efficient And it's not the right thing. And planting a tree is just one small part of a whole step. And so I always say for every complex problem in the world, there's a simple solution, which is absolutely wrong.

Leif: 31:28

It's great for getting elected build a wall, Brexit or something, But it's really bad for achieving good in the world. So what we do? we look at every ecosystem we're working at and we diagnose the disease And then we put the right medicine and the right dosage. Some that is land acquisition, leasing or land purchase, some that is ranges going on And some that, for example, in the population ranked tank, it's extinct. So we need to reintroduce that population, So it reintroduces into it. Sometimes it's refrostation.

Leif: 32:02

Most of the time it also involves some community work, working with a local community to make sure they're prosperous and happy and connected to the rainforest. And so which action we do and to what level depends on the disease of the patient, the disease of the patient of the ecosystem. And so that graph gives people the general idea of where money is to go, But it's not until we actually focus on an individual ecosystem that we can really determine what is the right percentage of expenditure for the right activity.

Andrew: 32:40

So you mentioned maybe one popular thing for potential donors or funders would be really interested in this planting trees, which may or may not be the appropriate course of action. But how do you then decide at any given moment which is going to be the focus? Or if you have potential donors that are really interested in one thing but maybe you don't think that's the way forward at the moment, how do you manage those kind of interactions with people and help them form the better expectations or more appropriate ones?

Leif: 33:13

Yeah, i guess there's two aspects of fundraising. One is a small, large number of fundraising. So you have a large number of small donors who they can't save the world, but they can contribute something to the project, and that's really about just connecting to them, which suddenly connects to their heart, and so, in fact, actually, the more you talk about the stuff we're talking about, the more you turn them off. You get the brain working and the endorphins go away and I'll go sit down. It's about connecting. This is the beautiful little orangutan. It deserves living a while as a sentient person like you. Can you give to help it, and whether your money may just achieve only that, but that's worth a lifetime of work, that that little rain tank and live its entire life and free. And that's really the message.

Leif: 34:12

Now, the other side of the two is some donors. They have the potential in some way to save the whole ecosystem, and so my job, then, is to take them on that journey, because most charity money at least from my perspective it wasted. It might be a flushed down tool, and you're probably aware of all aware of plenty of examples of that indiscriminate charity caused more problems than solving, and so, but, of course, if you don't have a knowledge in the area, you don't know the major donor You don't know. Well, seems good, it seems like a good idea. Well, the brochure looks fantastic. So my job is to communicate, is communicate and take them on a journey which often involves taking people on ecotourism and then taking the major donors to the project and seeing for the real life And they gain the feedback of genuine on the ground outcomes. And so and that's that, that's a highly, much more detailed level of communication, because I can take them on the journey from confusion, overload with information, to hope and vision about what can be achieved.

Leif: 35:26

And unfortunately that can't be done in mass media, Unless I have the time, like I do with you today, you know, just sit for an hour and talk about it. Normally, you know, it's just going to be the punch line to get connection.

Andrew: 35:44

I really wanted to ask you about the guiding and the ecotourism. Obviously, ecotourism is a is become a huge part of what a lot of people push for conservation. But the guiding part I don't know if too many people. I know one of my colleagues has taken some, some folks from the public into to Africa to their study site, whether it's in Uganda or the DR Congo. But how did you start guiding and having and actually on the website? if anyone's interested, i mean you can be hired.

Leif: 36:17

Yeah, i'm not gonna hire you. You can certainly come on one of my echo tours.

Andrew: 36:21

Okay.

Leif: 36:22

But yeah, well, what I mean to hire if, look, you've got a million dollars, save whole ecosystem, yeah, yeah.

Leif: 36:29

You know, like you know, you know if that yeah, yeah, Will I cost you myself. Well, it's really just a matter of price. You know, How big ecosystem are you willing to save? Mm-hmm, But no jokes aside, ecotourism, if part of it, but I don't see it as the savior that often people think it is. The reason is mass ecotourism, if we can make a lot of money from, normally destroys the environment for which it is operating. On you. We've seen so many cases of that in Indonesia and Malaysia, as just two examples. Butic small ecotourism, you know which you've done. If I feel sensitive, yes, it does work and it can work, but it's not gonna generate income to support the community and save the environment. It's just probably a small portion. Now then, of course, the question is well, why do I do it? One is my system is the ecotour company pays for my AFM, my accommodation, So I do an ecotour and then suddenly I'm in Indonesia doing all my meetings and doing all my project reporting and reviews and inspections, And it's all free.

Leif: 37:39

I say hey, for majority free is what we are after. The second thing is each donor let's say in these normal ecotourists donates $1,000 to have me come along and give them to. So 10 people, that $10,000 that we didn't have to save conservation, hey, that's worth a week. And lastly, is they get to enjoy me giving talks every night by the campfire in the rainforest And a few of them end up to be major donors because they're genuinely connected with the project, the animals and the people, seeing the real works, seeing the real people on the ground, and they go on to make really significant outcomes in the future for conservation. So, like everything is like an ecosystem of strategy to save money and ultimately save the forest, But the actual ecotour itself it's only a small part of the strategy.

Andrew: 38:46

Yeah, but it's so important for the idea of connecting people with what you're maybe using as the device for trying to get the donations And I wonder if, oh, please go ahead.

Leif: 38:58

Yeah, no, it is important because I remember talking to a you know a fundraiser for a major hospital in America And he said to the last person like he said, anyone who donates this hospital is saying my mother got this disease, my daughter, my sister. It's some personal connection. Unless it affects them personally, they don't care. But luckily, people are personally affected by the disease this hospital treats and therefore they will only give money.

Leif: 39:26

The problem I have is I'm trying to help indigenous communities in Indonesia that no one had even heard of and no one has connection to. I'm trying to save elephants and tigers and orangutans that people really haven't had a connection to, and therefore, how do I inspire them? It's so important for their survival because the money is in the West And this is probably in a little bit of a different way and true of a larger scale. The money is concentrated in one area, but the low hanging fruit and the ability to make real, meaningful change is in poor, developed countries, and so connecting those two is a challenge that, for example, you know, the hospital fundraiser doesn't have, and so therefore, ecotourism comes a important tool in my toolbox as a way of connecting people to the cause.

Andrew: 40:29

So where I was gonna go with that question too and your introduction is perfect is maybe I wanted to ask a kind of trivial question, which is what people kind of get wrong about orangutans before they go with you on these ecotourism and in what ways they kind of have a changed kind of perspective. But maybe, based on what you just introduced, you could follow that up by answering also what are your major activities then through the orangutan project for supporting the local communities as well? So I mean, obviously by protecting habitat then you protect a lot of the services that people are using. But is there other ways too that you're trying to make it win-win, not just for the wildlife but also for the people?

Leif: 41:15

It always has to be win-win. If you're doing a win-lose situation, you're part of the problem. it's always been win-win And it's not wildlife versus people, it's not environment versus economy, it's about women's solutions. those are false paradigms. I'll ask the first question first. what most people get wrong is how magnificent they are, because an orangutan which is adapted to the environment over millions of years. they're intelligent in the body Seen in the zoo is an ugly character which you are the magnificence they are, and when you see them in the wild, they finally go oh, wow, that's impressive. If not, something I was laughing at putting a sack on his head had to do the zoo. Now I'll ask you a second question. Yes, we care about people.

Andrew: 42:07

It's not like because the people who don't like what we're doing because we're affecting their business plan.

Leif: 42:14

You know and say, oh, they care about animals more than people. You know, they're kind of a peculiar, odd person. You know? No, not true. You know, we care about people just as much. We care about all living beings. As an example, the Talatmala community in Bukit Tikapulu, where tomorrow the first orangutan will produce. We are paid for midwife to live there And we are feeding the school children every day two meals a day, and we're educating them and providing money for not only the primary school education by scholarships, high school and university.

Andrew: 42:49

And as an example.

Leif: 42:51

Now the Talatmala community didn't name their children just six years old before they started this, because they probably would have died. Not worth getting attached to those little suckers. Now they name them at birth And we're working with them to the agricultural system under rainforest canopy that they will prosper. Affluence I'm not telling them that just being poor and surviving. I'm talking about well educated people. Affluence that's a vision that we have. Now the problem is, this is the challenge. This is the challenge we create. There's actually two indigenous communities here the orangutan member, which is Hunter Gathamus, and the Talatmala, which is the Slashon-Bernagal culture. Both systems of survival have been sustainable, environmentally sustainable, over centuries. But the big multinationals have taken all their land away, just like they've taken land from the orangutans and tigers. So their systems of survival no longer are sustainable and their children are becoming malnourished because they can't find enough food. They can't, and they keep doing. Slashon-bernagal culture. They'll destroy the land because they can't regenerate in time. So, no fault of their own. We have to try to work with them to develop agricultural systems under rainforest canopy that will allow it to become sustainable again.

Leif: 44:10

Now, as I mentioned before, we adapt as people to the environment by culture, and these indigenous communities have done the same. And if the environment changes and the culture remains the same, the people become maladjusted to the environment. Yeah, and the trouble is and we see that, we see that with indigenous communities all over the world, including America and Australia if you change the environment rapidly, the culture becomes dysfunctional And they can't function in a new society and they can't even function in the old society because the environment for that culture was adapted to is no longer there. And you see generations of dysfunctionality because they can't culturally adapt quick enough and people I guess try to do good, say hold on to the culture. You know doesn't make sense, but that's not what culture is. Culture is how we adapt to the environment. It's not some nice thing, doesn't make sense, and so the challenge is in a way which supports them and empowers people it's a slowly insensitive economic and environment system in a sympathetic way and giving them support in that process So they can come along at a rate that doesn't make sense. That is palatable.

Leif: 45:29

We're not very good at rapid changes as human beings, and so they can want survival and prosper, and so it's certainly not easy. Community work is the hardest, you know. Human beings are the hardest animal to conserve, you know, and the ones causing most of the problem. But we have to do it because we love those people and we care about them, you know, and the world we want to create is where these ecosystems are not only environmentally self-sustainable for future generations but economically self-sustainable. The indigenous communities they are prosperous, you know, and there's enough money generated to protection and the infrastructure to look after the ecosystem. So my vision is when I finally leave the world and leave these conservation projects behind. They're not only environmentally but economically self-sustainable, and we can only do that by supporting and caring for the indigenous communities.

Andrew: 46:28

Yeah, so probably this is. I'm a little bit naive. I don't know what the situation is like in Indonesia, but you mentioned it's not just there, but in other parts of the world where indigenous communities are very much marginalized and have a fair amount of trouble with conflict between the maybe dominating government or industry or whatever. But is it also true then with oil, oil Palm would be the leading industry? then that causes the most concern for I mean climate change aside most concern for orangutans and other animals in the forest. But what is the relationship then between the oil palm industry and these indigenous communities? So is it like I imagine, the wealthy landowners, industries come in, maybe take that away from local communities, or is there a lot? Is there also some? what I was trying to get at, is there also some demand from the local communities to be integrated partly into that system for their own economic gain?

Leif: 47:23

Of course there's pushback and you know if you look at the maps. if you go look at a map of concessions forest concessions or land concessions given away you don't see the area.

Leif: 47:34

This is their traditional tribal land And no it's like if they did that, they could never knock the forest down in the first place, because the forest wasn't empty. The forest hasn't empty. It's not like no one was living in the forest. So, you know, human beings have been making a living and sustain themselves in this forest for centuries, and so the only way you can actually, you know, in a sense, divide up the land and give it to big multinationals to make billions of dollars on short term profit is to ignore the fact that the indigenous communities there And of course you know they push back as much as they can, but they're powerless.

Leif: 48:11

They're not, you know. They don't have the education, the power, the money to fight back. So they certainly do, and certainly more and more you're seeing around the world, including the need for more and more recognition of indigenous rights. So there is progress, if it doesn't make sense, but it's slow and it certainly hasn't been there in nothing to pass to not just eliminate the vast majority of their land. So they're really kind of in the sense. Yeah, You know I was. You know, the image is that all orangutans and the innocent tiger, the indigenous communities, are stuck in a small patch of forest, you know, and then the rest is all gone. Yeah, oh, can you hear me, andrew?

Andrew: 49:01

Yeah, you're still there.

Leif: 49:03

Yeah, it's funny, my screen's just gone off.

Andrew: 49:05

I noticed you kind of went in the dark and now your screen is frozen. Is that thing there? No, I can still hear you fine.

Leif: 49:15

Okay, i'll continue talking. Sure, yeah And yeah. So yeah, you have these. You know orangutans, elephant tigers and people you know in these last pockets of mainfrosts working on where to survive. You know, and of course you know, in particular, the elephants and people are in huge conflict with each other because they're both intelligent persons who are trying to survive in the limited resources in the last remaining ecosystem, and the big thing we have to do is deal with a managed in this case, human elephant conflict.

Andrew: 49:53

So this might take us in a slightly different direction, just to kind of close out the interview here, but I've noticed you a couple of times in this interview refer to orangutans, and now most recently elephants, as persons with personhood, and this kind of gets into, i guess, what some people would think of as an interesting kind of philosophical question about the place of non-human species and something that I'm very interested in, following groups like the non-human rights project, for example, and I kind of wonder. I assume you do that deliberately and I'm kind of wondering what the reception is or when you refer to orangutans or elephants that way or what you mean. maybe I should start by asking you, like how, what you mean when you refer to them as persons or with personhood.

Leif: 50:48

Yeah, cool. It's very hard for a lot of people to, you know, think about orangutans, elephants as two examples of persons, because they seem to already define a person as a human being with homo sapiens. They're the mental block against that, just as there was the mental block when the founders of America wrote is self-evident that all men are created equal. Self-evident meaning they didn't explain it, but it wasn't self-evident that your skin was black, that you were equal, that you kept slaves, and it wasn't self-evident that the persons who shared the bed and raised their children were equal, because women didn't get to vote in America until the 1920s. And so we do have these mental cultural blocks over time. My proposition by any objective standard, orangutans and elephants, just as two examples we're talking about now, the self-aware persons. They have individual identity of themselves, they project themselves into the past and into the future, have anxiety about the past and worries about the future And therefore, you know, are and should be categorized as persons with the same rights as humans, although they don't share our species.

Andrew: 52:10

Yeah, it's really fascinating with especially recent cognitive science, the extent to which we were completely wrong in, and continue to be wrong in many ways when we figure out ways to actually examine those questions the capabilities of other species And it's. I'm certainly definitely behind the process of trying to get people to reconsider our what some might call human exceptionalism or another one. We recently had Franz Deval on the podcast and he talks about anthropodenial, so the idea that we should be more careful about not allowing the possibility that other species have minds that are capable of things like ours, rather than the reverse, which is don't anthropomorphize. So it's quite interesting Yeah.

Leif: 53:00

Yeah, and I think it's in general, what we, you know from a, from a real practical perspective our inability to extend our compassion and love and concern outside of all traditional tribal circles of nation and race, as two examples it's going to kill us. You know we're living in an interconnected world now. If we don't care about people and developed countries and what's happening to them, that comes back and bites us of climate change and political arrests and a myriad of other things. You know one sort of climate change is caused from. You know, the maltreatment of animals in the meat industry. You know our lack of compassion. Our living beings are coming back to kill us. So the future that we have to have if we're going to survive on the planet is to have a wider concern, not only for all humanity but all living creatures on the planet. Without that, we unfortunately have the technology, the ability and the reach to even destroy our own futures.

Andrew: 54:14

So, if you're up for it, i just want to ask two more questions. I know we've come to kind of the end of the hour here and we should probably get wrapping things up, but we've talked in and out about the role of zoos here and your involvement in zoos in conservation And I kind of wonder if you could just comment on where you see now zoos kind of succeeding in one of their major missions that they have, which is for conservation, and maybe where you see they need to maybe do a little bit better, because this is obviously another issue that's become almost mainstream in the you know whether zoos are kind of net positive or net negative for conservation, and just in general, Zoos aren't, at this stage, conservation organizations, because conservation you measure the outcomes in saving habitat and species in the wild And you can't say you know there's some strategic programs, you know, like the California Condor or the West Australian number, where you can bring animals and captivity you have a strategic program and reduce the use back to the bar.

Leif: 55:25

So there is notable exceptions. You know where zoos can do genuine conservation work, but by and large, zoo populations of megafauna such as tigers, elephants and orangutans are all unsustainable And they can't save themselves. They need to save the wild population. And so, and there's very little evidence that displaying animals and zoos have a direct conservation outcome. I think it's just you seem to convenient thing to make that connection but there's no evidence for it. So, even so, if even if zoos contribute a little bit to conservation, it's obviously a very inefficient conservation. You know, when you spend millions of dollars on a zoo and a few thousand go to conservation, it's obviously it's not a conservation organization. It's a animal display organization which may contribute a little bit to conservation.

Leif: 56:29

But, of course, as I mentioned, there's notable examples, of course, with intelligent persons such as orangutans and chimpanzees and elephants, there's actually ethical reasons why we don't want to keep them captivity, because persons don't do well in captivity, just as persons don't do well in refugee camps. Dispel all the loving care that they get. Persons need to be free and be able to control who and when and how often they interact with other species. Otherwise they can't have the mental health for prosperity. So when I was at the zoo I was certainly trying to encourage the zoo as much as I could to involve from a zoo to a conservation organization And, for example, the strategy was for, i say, orangutans was that some orangutans are, because of their injuries or diseases, can live the best life possible in a really good western zoo and get all the loving care from expo keepers.

Leif: 57:31

But some orangutans in a zoo could live their lives in rainforest sanctuaries in rainforest, free, but just have to be supported, allowed to breed naturally, and the offspring become part of a reintroduction program, the ultimate reintroduction candidates that will help their species And some have the ability to become fully wild and independent and leave the most dignified for selling life on the orangutan And therefore the zoo can be a shop front for orangutans which have been determined because of their physical or mental injuries, have the best possible life to live there, but their job is to be ambassadors and tell the story of, and raise the funds to support the sanctuaries and the wild orangutans, to support the species, and then so, in other words, the zoo becomes a genuine shop front for genuine work.

Leif: 58:31

And then, of course, my vision was that the staff, if you're working looking after the orangutans at a zoo, would also be part of the reintroduction program, would also be part of the sanctuary, and so the people will be actually talking to people who genuinely work in the field, who are generally out there making a meaningful change to save the environment and the species, and that becomes the most powerful advocate for visitors and turn zoos into the shop fronts for genuine conservation work, rather than the tenuous explanation for the rationale for survival which many zoos talk about today.

Andrew: 59:10

Yeah, So okay. Last question I think a good follow up to that is zoos you mentioned could be this place that well, zoos also think of themselves as places that allow for this meeting of humans and nonhumans, And I think I've heard some zoo professionals call this like it's a place where people can get inspired and really be shown a sense of awe at what nature can be like, And you yourself have done, I think, a lot in that regard in trying to connect to people in the general public. You've written a few books about your own stories of the wrong attends and their conservation, And I kind of wonder if you could maybe close by just talking about how did the ideas for books come out? How did you maybe this was something that you're natural at, or how did you kind of get the idea that you wanted to be able to communicate with people in that medium as well, And how does that kind of fit into the general roles that you have for yourself in conservation?

Leif: 1:00:17

It's all about communication and connecting with people. So all through my books they're basically autobiographical, you know. They're telling the journey that I'm having with orangutans and other species and humanity. But the other thing is it's a win-win situation. The books are written to provide value and make the person's radiant life better, more insightful and more prosperous, and so there's always a win-win situation and everything is going to be effective. So I believe people read my books and enjoy it and actually get something genuinely out of it. And then you know, if they benefit from it and you know from it, from entertainment level to the knowledge level, then they're more likely to have the compassion and love to give to causes such as, you know, the conservation of orangutans as an example. So there's always that win-win situation And so basically, the books are written because you know I have ideas, you know that I want to get out there and connect with people as well as podcasts, books and lectures and other tours are ways of doing that And so in many ways, far more powerful than a zoo, you know, because there's three reasons why I would argue that the zoo is not as powerful as they think with connection.

Leif: 1:01:49

One is I mentioned before orangutans an example of ugly caricatures of the magnificence of the environment. You're not seeing the animals that truly magnificent. The last second one is you know, kids know more about dinosaurs than any other animal when they're never seen.

Leif: 1:02:07

I have, yes, my kids are no exception And people care more probably about saving whales than probably most other species, but they've never seen one in a zoo. I'm not saying you know someone can't go to zoo and get a connection, but you know for the cost of running a zoo and the potential loss of welfare that's given to so many animals in the zoo, and I'm not saying there's some animals that can't be kept adequately in good welfare in addition to but there's certainly a big proportion of their current collections can't Then the cost benefits simply are there. So I'd rather stick to books, podcasts and echo tours as a more ethical and effective way of connecting with people.

Andrew: 1:02:52

Great Well, thanks so much for sharing And maybe we can just close by. I can ask you to share, like, if people want to learn more about the orangutan project or other things that you're working on or that you're doing, how can people find you and learn more and hopefully contribute?

Leif: 1:03:08

Yeah, I mean, if you go to the orangutanprojectorg and you see all that projects and how to help them, you can download all our annual pause and impact statements to find out exactly what we're doing, and that's wonderful. If you want to know more about my books and my podcasts and my YouTube talks, you can go to lathecox. or one word leis, c-o-c-k-s, dot, o-i-g. And, yeah, you can get the links to there. And, of course, ultimately, yeah, if anyone wants to come on echo tour and spend a few days in the jungle, i'd love to see you there.

Andrew: 1:03:48

All right, well, liv Cox, thanks so much for joining me on the primate cast. It's been a pleasure.

Leif: 1:03:52

You're most welcome. It's been great. No-transcript.