I couldn’t sleep
the night before I had spent tossing and
turning panic attack after panic attack
as impending doom crept upon me and now
I sat staring at two judges who were
looking at me judging me and as I sat
there i listened to the voice of someone
I considered a brother someone who had
taken a piece of me someone who had
killed a part of me and someone who was
robbing me of my dignity again calling
me a liar in that moment I felt like it
was the worst day of my life now the
more I talk about my story the more I
realized that I’m not alone and that all
of us at one point in our lives will
deal with some sort of trauma be it loss
depression addiction the World Health
Organization estimates that one in three
women worldwide will experience sexual
assault or physical violence in her
lifetime 300 million of us every year
are suffering from depression and
800,000 of us will commit suicide this
year we’re in a lot of pain but why now
for me it took me a long time to realize
that I could not hide from my pain that
I couldn’t suppress it any longer and it
took years of frustration and anger and
therapy and healing to finally get to
this point where I could even seek
justice in a courtroom and yes it felt
like the worst day of my life as old
memories washed over me wounds were
reopened but my only saving grace was
that the next day I would be travelling
to Sumatra so as someone who loves
biodiversity wildlife and jungles going
to Sumatra was a dream of mine
I had always dreamt of working with
orangutans here I was documenting an
organization that worked in conservation
Sumatra is one of 13,000 islands in the
world’s largest archipelago making up
the country of Indonesia it’s also one
of the world’s most important
biodiversity hotspots it’s the only
place in the world
we’re the Sumatran orangutan elephant
tiger and Rhino all live together in the
same place but all four of these
creatures are critically endangered due
to deforestation palm oil plantations
have penetrated deep into the Sumatran
landscape often overtaking old-growth
forests illegally and without consent
from the local villagers palm oil has
destroyed more than half of Sumatra’s
rainforest in just the last 30 years
that’s my lifetime and if you can
imagine one football field is the size
of a hectare and there are over 6
million hectares of these trees all over
Sumatra but the world’s forests are
responsible for taking in at least a
third of our carbon emissions every year
that’s 2.4 billion tons of carbon and
they act as carbon sinks so when we cut
them down we’re also releasing tons of
carbon into the atmosphere it’s a big
problem and thanks to an overarching
narrative of consumerism forests aren’t
the only things vanishing wildlife are
being poached for their tusks and fur
and teeth toxins are leeching into our
groundwater lakes and streams global
climate is changing and we have climate
refugees to deal with developing
countries bear the brunt of our
manufacturing so that we don’t have to
see smog but they can’t see the Sun and
they walk around with hospital masks in
different colors and designs just to
ease the pain of breathing in British
Columbia there’s even a company that’s
now bottling fresh air I think it’s safe
to say that at any point now we should
expect the Lorax to be paying us a visit
but despite the disaster that palm oil
is creating it’s also created many jobs
for local people and it’s stabilized the
Indonesian economy that’s come out of
very rough times and the world’s thirst
for palm oil is so great that Palma can
be found in almost every packaged
product available that’s a big issue but
the first person I met in Sumatra his
name is penny headed his way oh and if
you google his name you’ll find that
he’s a National Geographic Explorer
he’s also featured on the BBC and he
runs an organization called the
orangutan information center or oh I see
for short pannu comes from very humble
beginnings growing up in a very small
village and when he came face to an
orangutan with the for the first time it
was then that he realized what his true
calling was and he wanted to help their
cause so he worked hard going from his
tiny village to earning a place a
scholarship at Oxford University and
while he was at Oxford while his friends
were out at the pub or having fun penny
could be found cleaning toilets and
bathrooms as a cleaner just so he could
earn enough money to start his
organisation when he got back to Sumatra
and so since then pan newts organisation
has grown to include over 65 staff and
their mission is to ensure the survival
of the critically endangered Sumatran
orangutan orangutan means person of the
forest these amazing creatures they
share 97% of our DNA they’re some of the
most incredible incredibly intelligent
creatures on this planet these animals
can use tools in their day-to-day and
they also can understand sign language
they’re also the only tree dwelling or
arboreal of the great apes which means
that they need trees to survive and so
it’s no surprise that the decline in the
orangutan population matches that of the
deforestation rate in Sumatra so over
50% of these creatures have declined in
just the past 30 years so in the process
oh oh I see has had to task itself with
rescuing more than a hundred and twenty
orangutans in just five years
some orangutans like Makar here become
trapped in palm oil plantations when
they reach the forest edge palm well
workers are often encouraged to shoot
and kill these pests for reward and so
when we got the call about Makar we
rushed to her aid so that we could have
the chance of saving her and when we got
there the vet prepared tranquilizer and
prepared to shoot her from the ground
about 15 metres from the tree
and then when she was tranked finally we
waited for the drug to take effect and
waited on the ground when the drug took
hold
we waited with a net stretched between
the hands of the villagers and the OIC
team and when she finally got to the
ground the vet took a good look at her
body and found that she was riddled with
bullets all over her body in her face
thankfully they were healed over and she
was healthy enough to be translocated
back to the national park that day but
her life was only spared because she got
we got that call and that OAC had those
connections in that village little baby
JJ here and other orangutans like her
are so cute that people just want to
have them as pets or status symbols and
so we found CheY CheY in an amusement
park where she was being kept illegally
in a tiny dirty cage we rescued her and
on the way to quarantine she was so well
behaved that penny held her in his lap
instead of tranquilizing her but these
sweet orangutans baby smiles they have
some dark realities behind them you see
mother
Arango tends and their babies have a
strong strong relationship mama but mama
orangutan holds baby in her stomach for
nine months just like a human baby and
when she’s born baby spends the first
few years of her life with mom often
sticking around until she’s 7 or 11
years old and so to get a baby orangutan
you first have to kill its mother pannu
twins told me a story about a poacher
who had been out trying to find babies
to sell and so when he came across a
mother who had a baby clutched to her
chest he shot it and it fell to the
ground but when it fell and he neared
closer he realized that the mother
wasn’t exactly dead she was holding her
baby close to her chest and kissing it
over and over again on its forehead and
in that moment he was struck with the
knowledge that what he’d done all these
years and he turned and left leaving the
baby with her dead mother he never shot
another orangutan again and on the heels
of that story I’d like to introduce you
to someone named Nina
now Meena is someone if you ever go to
Sumatra that is known for being
terrifying and aggressive
before I’d met her I had heard every
story in the book she’d bitten more than
a hundred people and was in the Guinness
World Book of Records nobody dared
venture into what had become known as
Nina’s place so when I met Mina I was
pretty much expecting a monster but when
I met Mina I met someone who was utterly
different than what I expected
Mina is a loving mother to her baby
Mansoor she’s also the mother of an
older orangutan named Catrin who still
hangs around being eight or nine years
old and plays big sister to her little
brother the more I found out about Mina
the more I realized that she was not
what I had been told she was and in fact
the more I grew to know about her the
more I realized we had a lot in common
it turns out that she had actually also
been rescued as a baby once upon a time
and that she had been found in a house
being kept as a pet so that means that
she had been ripped away from the arms
of her dead mother and placed in a cage
for the enjoyment of others so when she
was finally rescued rehabilitated and
released years later they released her
in a place called bukit lawang now bukit
lawang is a place where tourists often
go in order to see orangutans in the
wild and so to guarantee sightings for
tourists they used to have a feeding
station where they would feed orangutans
as a couple times a day and it was this
feeding station that caused Mina to be
conditioned to beg for food from
tourists and local guides tragedy struck
in 1996 when she asked a tourist for
food and when he didn’t have any she
approached him aggressively and so a
guide slashed her in the face with a
machete leaving this scar as a reminder
since then she’s been hit with machetes
over ten times she’s in a lot of pain
and when I see Mina I see beyond that
fearless exterior to that traumatized
baby girl having your body invaded
feeling fearful and traumatised and
frustrated and angry or how things that
I could understand so and that was in
those moments I felt a sisterhood with
Mina I felt a connection that grew
deeper and deeper as my journey went on
and most of all I saw a mother not a
monster Arang attends need the forest to
survive but so do we humans conservation
is crucial and one of the things penny
once told me is that people are part of
the problem but we’re also part of the
solution and that’s one of the things I
absolutely admire about oh I see because
they understand that local people when
you connect with local people you can
get a lot done oh I see is not only run
by local people but they also include
local people in every stage of their
decision-making an implementation of
their projects and where other
conservation efforts have failed due to
paternalistic top-down efforts they have
succeeded I’d like you to meet a man
named bet on bet on works used to work
as a logger in a village called holoband
but years ago a palm oil company
illegally took over part of the national
forest that was part of their village
and it was noticeable that the water
shortages were beginning to affect their
local people because these people rely
on water for everything for drinking
cooking cleaning and palm oil plants
they suck up tens of gallons of water
every day and so when they notice this
was happening and had to start buying
bottled water oh I see got involved and
together the villagers and OIC fought
back against these plantation and they
ended up reclaiming the land legally so
but on is no longer a logger he is now
working as a person who’s restoring the
palm oil plantation back to a forest to
date oh I see has reclaimed more than a
thousand hectares of illegal palm oil
plantation
I was lucky a few months ago to actually
witness the reclamation of 75 hectares
of land it was phenomenal and I have
never been so happy to see so many palm
oil trees cut down now that’s not all
because pen because oh I see now has to
get to work with restoring all a
thousand hectares that they’ve reclaimed
and they’re almost halfway done this was
something that was once thought to be
impossible but oh I see is proving
everyone wrong as they
vert palm oil plantations back into
forests so this is how it might look
after a palm oil plantation has been cut
down and the grass has taken over and
these grasses are very difficult to
manage but somehow oh I see manages and
the next step we’ll make some planting
lines and then plant a mixture of fast
and slow growing species that are
endemic to Indonesia soon before you
know it the pollinators the birds the
bees and the butterflies are getting
together and helping with the process of
pollination and growing the forest this
is the new forest next to what it used
to be a palm oil plantation and this is
only after three to five years of
growing and this is the new forest next
to the old-growth forest this is the
same restoration site photograph from
two different angles it’s phenomenal and
wouldn’t you know it that before long
there were animals coming back we have
birds monkeys elephants and of course
orangutans so all of this magic and
Wonder reminded me of the movie Fern
Gully and this quote but for just as
every seed holds the magic and power of
creation so too do you and every other
creature in this world and while that
sound might sound mystical and
unscientific many studies are showing
that we are closer to nature and each
other than we once thought a study by
the University of Illinois found that
when comparing public housing units that
had trees and those that didn’t they
found that the ones that had trees
people were more likely to feel a sense
of connection a sense of unity and
belonging they felt like there was less
crime in their neighborhoods and they
also felt like they were able to
overcome life’s challenges pretty
phenomenal things and other studies
numerous studies show that just being in
nature or viewing scenes of nature can
cause us to reduce our anxiety our fear
aggression blood pressure muscle tension
all kinds of things and so it’s pretty
amazing how connected we are
and in Indonesia it’s customary to touch
your heart after you have shaking
someone’s hand and met them so I’ve been
touched by everyone I’ve met in
Indonesia and beyond words beyond what I
can explain and so it’s this sense of
connection the sense of restoration that
has caused me to feel more determined
than ever to act they’ve not only
rescued of Ranga tans reclaimed forest
and restored them but they’ve also
rescued me they’ve helped me reclaim my
sense of humanity and also restored a
sense of connection I had in the world
that I didn’t even know I had lost now I
have become so involved and so enamoured
by this project that I’ve partnered with
oh I see to create something called the
Sumatran Wildlife Sanctuary this is a
place that’s going to be a conservation
area spanning 50 hectares and it’ll also
include a primate Rescue Center now when
I first heard this concept from pannu
the fears and the doubts were going
around in my mind and I thought oh my
goodness can I really do this but the
new me the new restored me was saying
why not why not try and you know what
since then and that’s only about a
couple years ago we’ve already bought
five hectares and we’re well on our way
to buying the rest but are these small
efforts enough have we gone too far in
destroying the planet and ourselves is
it even worth trying well when I look
back on the day of that hearing it felt
like the worst day of my life
but in retrospect it was actually one of
the best where the pain had left a deep
crevice empathy had a deeper reservoir
to take over so I could care more about
the people on the planet and in case
you’re wondering I ended up winning my
case and it was the best day of my life
I had never felt more joyful more alive
more connected but at the end of the day
it doesn’t matter if we win or lose it
just matters that we try
and so together let’s plant some seeds
and make them grow thank you
[Applause]
the night before I had spent tossing and
turning panic attack after panic attack
as impending doom crept upon me and now
I sat staring at two judges who were
looking at me judging me and as I sat
there i listened to the voice of someone
I considered a brother someone who had
taken a piece of me someone who had
killed a part of me and someone who was
robbing me of my dignity again calling
me a liar in that moment I felt like it
was the worst day of my life now the
more I talk about my story the more I
realized that I’m not alone and that all
of us at one point in our lives will
deal with some sort of trauma be it loss
depression addiction the World Health
Organization estimates that one in three
women worldwide will experience sexual
assault or physical violence in her
lifetime 300 million of us every year
are suffering from depression and
800,000 of us will commit suicide this
year we’re in a lot of pain but why now
for me it took me a long time to realize
that I could not hide from my pain that
I couldn’t suppress it any longer and it
took years of frustration and anger and
therapy and healing to finally get to
this point where I could even seek
justice in a courtroom and yes it felt
like the worst day of my life as old
memories washed over me wounds were
reopened but my only saving grace was
that the next day I would be travelling
to Sumatra so as someone who loves
biodiversity wildlife and jungles going
to Sumatra was a dream of mine
I had always dreamt of working with
orangutans here I was documenting an
organization that worked in conservation
Sumatra is one of 13,000 islands in the
world’s largest archipelago making up
the country of Indonesia it’s also one
of the world’s most important
biodiversity hotspots it’s the only
place in the world
we’re the Sumatran orangutan elephant
tiger and Rhino all live together in the
same place but all four of these
creatures are critically endangered due
to deforestation palm oil plantations
have penetrated deep into the Sumatran
landscape often overtaking old-growth
forests illegally and without consent
from the local villagers palm oil has
destroyed more than half of Sumatra’s
rainforest in just the last 30 years
that’s my lifetime and if you can
imagine one football field is the size
of a hectare and there are over 6
million hectares of these trees all over
Sumatra but the world’s forests are
responsible for taking in at least a
third of our carbon emissions every year
that’s 2.4 billion tons of carbon and
they act as carbon sinks so when we cut
them down we’re also releasing tons of
carbon into the atmosphere it’s a big
problem and thanks to an overarching
narrative of consumerism forests aren’t
the only things vanishing wildlife are
being poached for their tusks and fur
and teeth toxins are leeching into our
groundwater lakes and streams global
climate is changing and we have climate
refugees to deal with developing
countries bear the brunt of our
manufacturing so that we don’t have to
see smog but they can’t see the Sun and
they walk around with hospital masks in
different colors and designs just to
ease the pain of breathing in British
Columbia there’s even a company that’s
now bottling fresh air I think it’s safe
to say that at any point now we should
expect the Lorax to be paying us a visit
but despite the disaster that palm oil
is creating it’s also created many jobs
for local people and it’s stabilized the
Indonesian economy that’s come out of
very rough times and the world’s thirst
for palm oil is so great that Palma can
be found in almost every packaged
product available that’s a big issue but
the first person I met in Sumatra his
name is penny headed his way oh and if
you google his name you’ll find that
he’s a National Geographic Explorer
he’s also featured on the BBC and he
runs an organization called the
orangutan information center or oh I see
for short pannu comes from very humble
beginnings growing up in a very small
village and when he came face to an
orangutan with the for the first time it
was then that he realized what his true
calling was and he wanted to help their
cause so he worked hard going from his
tiny village to earning a place a
scholarship at Oxford University and
while he was at Oxford while his friends
were out at the pub or having fun penny
could be found cleaning toilets and
bathrooms as a cleaner just so he could
earn enough money to start his
organisation when he got back to Sumatra
and so since then pan newts organisation
has grown to include over 65 staff and
their mission is to ensure the survival
of the critically endangered Sumatran
orangutan orangutan means person of the
forest these amazing creatures they
share 97% of our DNA they’re some of the
most incredible incredibly intelligent
creatures on this planet these animals
can use tools in their day-to-day and
they also can understand sign language
they’re also the only tree dwelling or
arboreal of the great apes which means
that they need trees to survive and so
it’s no surprise that the decline in the
orangutan population matches that of the
deforestation rate in Sumatra so over
50% of these creatures have declined in
just the past 30 years so in the process
oh oh I see has had to task itself with
rescuing more than a hundred and twenty
orangutans in just five years
some orangutans like Makar here become
trapped in palm oil plantations when
they reach the forest edge palm well
workers are often encouraged to shoot
and kill these pests for reward and so
when we got the call about Makar we
rushed to her aid so that we could have
the chance of saving her and when we got
there the vet prepared tranquilizer and
prepared to shoot her from the ground
about 15 metres from the tree
and then when she was tranked finally we
waited for the drug to take effect and
waited on the ground when the drug took
hold
we waited with a net stretched between
the hands of the villagers and the OIC
team and when she finally got to the
ground the vet took a good look at her
body and found that she was riddled with
bullets all over her body in her face
thankfully they were healed over and she
was healthy enough to be translocated
back to the national park that day but
her life was only spared because she got
we got that call and that OAC had those
connections in that village little baby
JJ here and other orangutans like her
are so cute that people just want to
have them as pets or status symbols and
so we found CheY CheY in an amusement
park where she was being kept illegally
in a tiny dirty cage we rescued her and
on the way to quarantine she was so well
behaved that penny held her in his lap
instead of tranquilizing her but these
sweet orangutans baby smiles they have
some dark realities behind them you see
mother
Arango tends and their babies have a
strong strong relationship mama but mama
orangutan holds baby in her stomach for
nine months just like a human baby and
when she’s born baby spends the first
few years of her life with mom often
sticking around until she’s 7 or 11
years old and so to get a baby orangutan
you first have to kill its mother pannu
twins told me a story about a poacher
who had been out trying to find babies
to sell and so when he came across a
mother who had a baby clutched to her
chest he shot it and it fell to the
ground but when it fell and he neared
closer he realized that the mother
wasn’t exactly dead she was holding her
baby close to her chest and kissing it
over and over again on its forehead and
in that moment he was struck with the
knowledge that what he’d done all these
years and he turned and left leaving the
baby with her dead mother he never shot
another orangutan again and on the heels
of that story I’d like to introduce you
to someone named Nina
now Meena is someone if you ever go to
Sumatra that is known for being
terrifying and aggressive
before I’d met her I had heard every
story in the book she’d bitten more than
a hundred people and was in the Guinness
World Book of Records nobody dared
venture into what had become known as
Nina’s place so when I met Mina I was
pretty much expecting a monster but when
I met Mina I met someone who was utterly
different than what I expected
Mina is a loving mother to her baby
Mansoor she’s also the mother of an
older orangutan named Catrin who still
hangs around being eight or nine years
old and plays big sister to her little
brother the more I found out about Mina
the more I realized that she was not
what I had been told she was and in fact
the more I grew to know about her the
more I realized we had a lot in common
it turns out that she had actually also
been rescued as a baby once upon a time
and that she had been found in a house
being kept as a pet so that means that
she had been ripped away from the arms
of her dead mother and placed in a cage
for the enjoyment of others so when she
was finally rescued rehabilitated and
released years later they released her
in a place called bukit lawang now bukit
lawang is a place where tourists often
go in order to see orangutans in the
wild and so to guarantee sightings for
tourists they used to have a feeding
station where they would feed orangutans
as a couple times a day and it was this
feeding station that caused Mina to be
conditioned to beg for food from
tourists and local guides tragedy struck
in 1996 when she asked a tourist for
food and when he didn’t have any she
approached him aggressively and so a
guide slashed her in the face with a
machete leaving this scar as a reminder
since then she’s been hit with machetes
over ten times she’s in a lot of pain
and when I see Mina I see beyond that
fearless exterior to that traumatized
baby girl having your body invaded
feeling fearful and traumatised and
frustrated and angry or how things that
I could understand so and that was in
those moments I felt a sisterhood with
Mina I felt a connection that grew
deeper and deeper as my journey went on
and most of all I saw a mother not a
monster Arang attends need the forest to
survive but so do we humans conservation
is crucial and one of the things penny
once told me is that people are part of
the problem but we’re also part of the
solution and that’s one of the things I
absolutely admire about oh I see because
they understand that local people when
you connect with local people you can
get a lot done oh I see is not only run
by local people but they also include
local people in every stage of their
decision-making an implementation of
their projects and where other
conservation efforts have failed due to
paternalistic top-down efforts they have
succeeded I’d like you to meet a man
named bet on bet on works used to work
as a logger in a village called holoband
but years ago a palm oil company
illegally took over part of the national
forest that was part of their village
and it was noticeable that the water
shortages were beginning to affect their
local people because these people rely
on water for everything for drinking
cooking cleaning and palm oil plants
they suck up tens of gallons of water
every day and so when they notice this
was happening and had to start buying
bottled water oh I see got involved and
together the villagers and OIC fought
back against these plantation and they
ended up reclaiming the land legally so
but on is no longer a logger he is now
working as a person who’s restoring the
palm oil plantation back to a forest to
date oh I see has reclaimed more than a
thousand hectares of illegal palm oil
plantation
I was lucky a few months ago to actually
witness the reclamation of 75 hectares
of land it was phenomenal and I have
never been so happy to see so many palm
oil trees cut down now that’s not all
because pen because oh I see now has to
get to work with restoring all a
thousand hectares that they’ve reclaimed
and they’re almost halfway done this was
something that was once thought to be
impossible but oh I see is proving
everyone wrong as they
vert palm oil plantations back into
forests so this is how it might look
after a palm oil plantation has been cut
down and the grass has taken over and
these grasses are very difficult to
manage but somehow oh I see manages and
the next step we’ll make some planting
lines and then plant a mixture of fast
and slow growing species that are
endemic to Indonesia soon before you
know it the pollinators the birds the
bees and the butterflies are getting
together and helping with the process of
pollination and growing the forest this
is the new forest next to what it used
to be a palm oil plantation and this is
only after three to five years of
growing and this is the new forest next
to the old-growth forest this is the
same restoration site photograph from
two different angles it’s phenomenal and
wouldn’t you know it that before long
there were animals coming back we have
birds monkeys elephants and of course
orangutans so all of this magic and
Wonder reminded me of the movie Fern
Gully and this quote but for just as
every seed holds the magic and power of
creation so too do you and every other
creature in this world and while that
sound might sound mystical and
unscientific many studies are showing
that we are closer to nature and each
other than we once thought a study by
the University of Illinois found that
when comparing public housing units that
had trees and those that didn’t they
found that the ones that had trees
people were more likely to feel a sense
of connection a sense of unity and
belonging they felt like there was less
crime in their neighborhoods and they
also felt like they were able to
overcome life’s challenges pretty
phenomenal things and other studies
numerous studies show that just being in
nature or viewing scenes of nature can
cause us to reduce our anxiety our fear
aggression blood pressure muscle tension
all kinds of things and so it’s pretty
amazing how connected we are
and in Indonesia it’s customary to touch
your heart after you have shaking
someone’s hand and met them so I’ve been
touched by everyone I’ve met in
Indonesia and beyond words beyond what I
can explain and so it’s this sense of
connection the sense of restoration that
has caused me to feel more determined
than ever to act they’ve not only
rescued of Ranga tans reclaimed forest
and restored them but they’ve also
rescued me they’ve helped me reclaim my
sense of humanity and also restored a
sense of connection I had in the world
that I didn’t even know I had lost now I
have become so involved and so enamoured
by this project that I’ve partnered with
oh I see to create something called the
Sumatran Wildlife Sanctuary this is a
place that’s going to be a conservation
area spanning 50 hectares and it’ll also
include a primate Rescue Center now when
I first heard this concept from pannu
the fears and the doubts were going
around in my mind and I thought oh my
goodness can I really do this but the
new me the new restored me was saying
why not why not try and you know what
since then and that’s only about a
couple years ago we’ve already bought
five hectares and we’re well on our way
to buying the rest but are these small
efforts enough have we gone too far in
destroying the planet and ourselves is
it even worth trying well when I look
back on the day of that hearing it felt
like the worst day of my life
but in retrospect it was actually one of
the best where the pain had left a deep
crevice empathy had a deeper reservoir
to take over so I could care more about
the people on the planet and in case
you’re wondering I ended up winning my
case and it was the best day of my life
I had never felt more joyful more alive
more connected but at the end of the day
it doesn’t matter if we win or lose it
just matters that we try
and so together let’s plant some seeds
and make them grow thank you
[Applause]
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