Orangutans may be ‘a lost cause’ but he’ll keep on trying

COFFEE WITH THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR — Journalism professor Shawn Thompson wrote in his book, The Intimate Ape, that “Not many people talk a lot about orangutans. Is it normal to do that? Or is it just a bit weird? I don’t care.”

People who know Thompson or have taken his classes at TRU say it’s pretty easy to get him to talk about orangutans. When I sat down with him in Blenz the other day to tape a segment for Coffee With the Armchair Mayor on CBC’s Daybreak Kamloops, I’d originally intended to talk about newspapers.

He was perfectly willing to talk about that, too, but when we were setting things up by phone, he mentioned he was getting a group together to go to Borneo in July to visit orangutans, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about that instead of dead newspapers.

Thompson has real passion on the issue of saving orangutans from extinction. He’s been doing his part for many years and, as he admits, he knows much more about orangutans than most people.

In fact, during the taping I suggested to him that if you asked 10 people what they knew about orangutans, it probably wouldn’t be much more than that they’re orange and hairy and look like they’re fun to be around.

And, some among us might remember Clyde, Clint Eastwood’s orang-utan buddy in the 1978 flick Every Which Way But Loose.

I wanted to know if we’ve been misled by Hollywood. Maybe, I suggested, orangutans are like chimpanzees. We used to think chimpanzees stayed small and cute and lovable forever, like Cheetah in the Tarzan movies.

Then we found out they grow up to be big, ugly and plain mean.

No, said Thompson, orangutans really are gentle creatures, because they’re solitary, unlike chimps and gorillas. They don’t need the competitive instincts their cousin apes do.

“Orangutans are a much more gentile, much more passive species,” he told me.

Given how much he puts in to saving them, I was surprised at the answer when I asked if they can be be saved. “I think it’s a lost cause,” he said. “I don’t think we can save them.”

The reason is that their forests are being destroyed by logging. They’re tree-dwellers and can’t live without the forest. But Thompson says we should try, because saving the orangutans is good for us as well as them.

“Orangutans demonstrate the degree of the state of crisis we’ve reached — we’re on the brink of destroying a sentient being that is kin to us.”

There’s something noble about expecting to fail but trying anyway. I hope Thompson proves himself wrong about saving orangutans.