I love her too! What a kind hearted loving person she is esp. to have left her life behind as she once knew it and dedicate herself to this mission. I wish I were in a position in myn life to do the same! God will bless her always.
I completely agree RocketDogforever, Lone is a wonderful person. It takes a lot for someone to give up the comfort of their city life to dedicate themselves to save such beautiful animals. Her success is totally reliant upon donations and awareness of the destruction of the forest. Her reward is not a 6 figure salary, but instead the satisfaction that she is saving the lives of so many orangutans. I so wish I could just get up and leave my life and go to Indonesia and help her. She is a beautiful person and so much more.
Lone pays a far greater price for her dedication to saving orangutans than most of here are aware of. The rain forests have all types of diseases and illnesses that affect humans as well as orangutans since we share 97% of the same genes. As you probably know Nyrau Menteng is careful to keep orangutans from being exposed to humans as much as possible because of the transmission of diseases and illnesses from humans to orangutans often with fatal results for the orangutans. However the reverse also happens: orangutans transferring diseases to humans. Many of the orangutans that Nyru Menteng rescues (and Lone frequently takes an active part in those rescues) are ill when they are rescued, particularly infant orangutans who lost their mothers early in life and didn't have the immunity of their mothers milk passed on to them. Orangutans do die at Nyrau Menteng and Orangutan Island despite the best efforts of their medical staff as anyone who watches orangutan island has witnessed. What you don't see on Orangutan Island are the times that Lone, herself has been infected and become terribly ill. In some cases requiring her to actually leave Nyrau Menteng and fly to the U.K. for treatments in order to save her life! Now THAT is dedication and devotion in anyones book! She could certainly go on tour and give paid lectures on orangutans and their preservation and live in plush hotels with clean water, no poisonous snakes or insects and make a great deal of money doing so. She could spend her life in total comfort, but instead she puts the orangutans who need her first above her own wealth and comfort! I doubt there are many others who would do the same; making her a very special lady indeed!
I agree Lone is an amazing woman. And tho I am extremely disappointed that Animal Planet scheduling of Orangutan Island, it certainly is managing to educate us about our fuzzy relatives, which is the whole point of the series.
I missed to final 2 Sundays due to hospitalization, & would love to see those final 4 episodes, so if anyone can find out about reruns or season 2 DVD I'd be grateful. From what I read here, Season 3 will be a whole new group, which means our loveable bunch will be one step closer to wild release. Good on that
Rocketdogforever.....The information I posted about Lone came from a contact I have who gets to Nyrau Menteng on a somewhat regular basis.....or possibly from a website! I'm not absolutely certain anymore where I got the info from. Since I've become involved in Orangutan preservation I read everything I can about them, view every DVD I can get my hands on and read everything I can find online. I've also made a few "friends/contacts" who have been to or go to Nyrau Menteng as part of their efforts to save the orangutans! I hate to disappoint you but Lone is a very very busy person, as you can imagine. She really has her hands full with a rescue and rehab center that is bursting at the seems with orphaned orangutans and always having to find ways to obtain funding for the center. Right now she is having to deal with an outbreak of malaria at her rescue center! I think that everyone who loves orangutans would love to meet Lone, but meeting admirers isn't her goal in life: saving orangutans is! If she were to have an email address, mailing address or phone number posted anywhere she wouldn't have time to save a single orangutan as she would have to spend all her time answering emails, letters and phone calls. That is why it is almost impossible to contact her, let alone actually meet her in person. Dave
I love all orangutans but like everyone else I can't help but have a favorite, or in my case two favorites. I like Jordan and Bonita because both of them are somewhat outcasts on Orangutan Island: that is they both have trouble being part of the Orangutan Island family for different reasons. I guess I always root for and have sympathy for the "under dogs" of a group!
