JP/J.B. Djwan

An ongoing battle with cancer following a partial mastectomy was the catalyst that sent UK-born Lucy Wisdom winging her way into orangutan protection and conservation back in 1994.

“I started volunteering with orangutans in 1994. It was due to the cancer. With cancer I decided to change my life; I changed my boyfriend, my job, my country, even my underpants,” laughs Lucy, a petite 52-year-old with a voracious appetite for life and the energy to go with it, so that even her hair bounces with vitality as she walks.

She explains the changes she made in her life were based on an all-encompassing response to cancer.

“Changing what you are doing is the holistic approach. Cancer suggests you are doing something that is not in line with your life.”

It was not, she adds, that there was really anything wrong with her life. She was then working with the Mutoid Waste Company, a theatrical organization.  

“This Mad Max type group [was] doing recycled theatrical works – we were a big group – 35 of us. I drove a fish car for years and later a crocodile car that had teeth. And it was a hard physical life – we were using chainsaws and grinders and I was not just working, but living that job. It was very metallic – not a healing place,” explains Lucy of her earlier life; a far cry from Sumatra so rich in “all those [Rudyard Kipling’s] Jungle Book animals” – including the orangutans that in 1994 became Lucy’s reason for living.

She ended up in Sumatra by accident during a trip Down Under to the beaches of Byron Bay in Australia, to “test out my new breast – the two thirds that were left [post-mastectomy]. Everyone goes topless at Byron, so I went to Australia,” says Lucy of her humorous and deeply courageous face-off with adversity.

During stopovers in Bali on the way to Australia and to Sumatra on her return, the torch of forest conservation and orangutan protection slipped into her hands; she has held onto it ever since.

“I had found that I could work as a volunteer at the Bohorok Orangutan Rehabilitation station in Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra, if I applied through Jakarta. I was feeling fit and well recovered from the operation and believed the cancer was a thing of the past.”

Bohorok is today no longer a rehabilitation center, but rather an orangutan eco-viewing area.

Over the next few years Lucy’s circus flying trapeze skills came in useful; she spent five years swinging through the trees teaching young orangutans the forest skills they had never had the chance to learn from their parents – most had been victims of kidnap and sale.

“By the third time I went back to Sumatra, in 1996, I was on a mission. That’s the year I started the Sumatran Orangutan Society, SOS. I don’t know how I did it. Slowly I learned. I read and studied – I am self-taught,” says Lucy, an archaeologist by profession. She worked through the early days of SOS, a foundation that is today recognized internationally for the valuable conservation work being undertaken in the Gunung Leuser National Park.

Raising the profile of Sumatran orangutans became even more critical in 2000, says Lucy, when it was confirmed that Sumatran and Borneo orangutans are two separate species. Once the Sumatran orangutans are lost they are lost forever.

“When I first went to Gunung Leuser there were believed to be around 25,000 orangutans. Today there are [about] 6,700. Especially now, I feel time is running out for me and for the Sumatran orangutans.”

The cancer came back throughout her body in 1999. Regular chemotherapy and her intense faith in her conservation work has, she says, been the difference between succumbing to the disease and battling for orangutan protection and habitat.

“I believe the passion I have for protecting them has kept me alive. Since 1999 I’ve had secondaries [cancers] everywhere; bones, liver, lungs. So the message is even if you are faced with a severe diagnosis, don’t give up – find a passion. I didn’t go looking for the orangutans. They found me,” says Lucy adding, “and wheatgrass. I really believe that works. It’s about what you believe.”

Her passion landed her the UK’s Women in Ethical Business Award in 2008 and saw her appear in the hero of the month pages of magazine Marie Claire.

These awards reflect the valuable work undertaken by SOS, which employs 15 full-time staff in Medan, North Sumatra, to oversee SOS’s many on-the-ground projects. These include orangutan guide training, community tree planting, community education, tree nurseries, rehabilitation of degraded forest zones, conservation scholarships, palm oil plantation tours into lands that were once prime forests and information dissemination on the plight of orangutans to the global community.

Fund raising is a nonstop activity and recognized organizations, such as Unesco and The National Geographic Society, have come on board, along with private donations. SOS achieved registered charity status in the UK some years ago

“On just one fundraising night in the UK we raised 24,000 pounds – that is serious money for projects in Sumatra,” she says.

This week SOS added to its fundraising efforts by opening The Jungle Shop in Ubud. The Jungle Shop is a thrift or charity shop that sells donated clothing, SOS merchandise and other items. Thrift shops are common in many Western countries, raising substantial funds for charity.

Lucy points out that she is not “an orangutan cuddler. I am working for the forests, not orangutans. Orangutans are the ambassadors for the forests. These are the only jungles where many of the animals from The Jungle Book still live together in harmony. There are tigers and elephants, rhinoceros, pythons, sun bears. It’s an ecosystem – without, say one ant species, then the whole lot collapses.

“White people have chopped down all our forests. We didn’t know any better. Now it is our responsibility to help others protect their forests and support sustainable communities.

“We are losing things we don’t even know existed. You never know, the cure for my cancer might be in those forests.”

For more information contact SOS in Bali on 0361 972 906 or visit the website on www.orangutans-sos.org or www.orangutancentre.org

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