Saving the Orangutan from Extinction. Leif Cocks

The individual orangutans that we save and give the opportunity to live a free and happy life is a lifetime achievement of immeasurable value.

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Leif Cocks made a life choice based upon not having animals suffer for him.

Leif began his career with the Perth zoo in Perth, Australia, where he met, observed and interacted with many of the animals.

Through his zoological journey.

He discovered orangutans and their intelligence.

There is so much to Leif and his work throughout the years.

First, he has several academic qualifications as a zoologist and biologist.

His research is peer reviewed.

He has worked and continues to work with species management programs worldwide while continuing campaigning and lobbying for animal welfare in the wild, including the

He is dedicated to habitat protection.

Leif has a passion and he says it best.

My work with the zoo had instilled within me an iron clad determination to make a practical and lasting difference for all orangutans and other beings on the planet.

And I am so honored and so thrilled to bring Leif Cocks and his positive imprints to you.

Leif, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's wonderful to be here..

Oh, thank you.

I'm excited.

I've read.

I'm still in the process of finishing one of your books and learning so much about everything that you've done and have gone through, but have also gone through with the

And you're bringing a wealth of knowledge not just knowledge, but research, for generations and generations to come.

You started so young with your journey.

And I know there's a quote that you used, which I really, really liked "what you seek is seeking you" by Rūmī.

Leif let's start with your absolute passion.

I've working with 15 orangutans, as you mentioned, and then discovered not only that, they're wonderful beings, but the self-aware persons

that don't belong in captivity.

In fact, they don't do well in captivity and they can only thrive while living in their own culture and communities in the wild.

And of course at the same time, discovering that they're critically endangered species being driven to extinction by having been individually slaughtered on a mass scale.

And, and therefore that started on my journey to, save the orangutans, but not only in doing that, helping save other living beings, such as tigers, elephants, indigenous human communities.

And of course, protecting the habitat is one of the most effective things we can do to mitigate climate

change.

Change.

Oh, absolutely.

Working with animals in captivity was a journey for Leif.

But through his research and observations, he grew from that knowledge.

There's two things.

One, we need to base information on facts and knowledge and open to that knowledge, changing with new information rather than set in our ways.

But in particular, you, we discover, let's say in any industry, there's kind of a cult like atmosphere with the human ability of a cognitive dissonance.

And so there's inability for a organization or a association like zoos to understand what has changed about knowledge, about keeping animals in captivity and grow out of

And those who challenge those ideas often excluded and persecuted because that's affecting the integrity and survival of the tribe.

And so in some ways we have to become as more enightened, but in other ways we have to overcome the natural tribal evolutionary tendencies that keeps us trapped in these false paradigms and not to be afraid to grow.

So that is so easy to talk about.

Right.

How do we change that mindset?

Because it can't just be one person or two people or three people that are going to change the world.

We have people like you in the field

. Of course, Jane Goodall, but there are so many more people out there.

So how do we change that mindset?

Yeah, no, exactly.

It's difficult at one, at one point is, an example.

I was went to a zoo and, and they showed me their orangatans and I said, oh, your orangatan really mentally distraught, and not doing very well.

And the zookeeper said, looks right to me, he's perfectly fine.

And actually it looks just like that orangutan down there at the zoo down the road and they all act the same.

And of course you're absolutely right.

It's a bit like a, I dunno, prison, guard, in describing how humans behave based on their only experiences, dealing with violent criminals or people who are in very unusual and stressful situation.

And so it's very hard because, from a very early stage, when I started working for orangutan, I would go to the wild.

Look at them in in the wild, rescue them, you know, and then stop their journey to captivity.

So I had a very different perspective.

I was coming back and comparing two very different animals, which most zookeepers don't have, the ability their experience it is extremely narrow, you know?

And and the fact that the orangutans were dying far too early, uh, mentally stressed and had all sorts of problems just seemed normal because you didn't have that context.

And so, so there needs to be expansion of understanding.

And of course, being in the zoo industry, they set themselves up in the public as the experts.

And therefore it's very hard for them to intercept outside new information and the fact that they may not be doing right or the future may not be what their expertise is in.

It's very threatening.

Therefore they need to exclude, all that information and actually deny it.

This is why it's not possible to really, make really good things happen in the world, unless we reform the world, unless we reform ourselves, and become less egocentric, more

We can't reform the world unless we reform ourselves.

But on the opposite side of things is, we have to be fearless with our advice and knowledge and not be afraid to speak truth to power.

But we also have to do that in the most loving way that we can do.

Because we want people to change their minds that come along the journey you have to provide that loving space to allow them to change.

Because they're automatically, even just by the next information alone will feel uh, they have to defend it.

And if they're in a cultural cult where all others need to defend that paradigm, there's no possibility of change, but we can chip away with it

if we constantly provide information in a loving and caring manner and allow the opportunity for, for people in organizations to move forward.

You have seen life for an orangutan in a zoo in captivity.

You've also worked with them in the wild.

You have released an animal that was bred in captivity.

Your journey is incredible, truly incredible.

And the knowledge and the research that you have is extremely informative.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in general, I, I think it's like having two wings of the bird, knowledge and love.

And if you have one of those wings broken, you go around in circles, and you don't achieve any thing..

Both are necessary to keep meaningful outcomes.

One of the most wonderful experiences I've had in many times is being with many orangutans when they're giving birth, which is a wonderful experience.

They're the most loving mothers.

They suckle the infants for eight years.

But at least for me personally, different to maybe how others zoo keepers interact with orangutans, because they're seven times stronger than the man and they potentially could hurt you.

They always have a cage between them and that the big yellow line on the floor don't go beyond this otherwise the orangutan will get you, but all my working life, I just walked in with the enclosures

So it's a very different relationship to take those bars away and, and, and have a personal relationship with them.

And one of the most wonderful experiences I've had many times within 48 hours of the baby giving birth, the mother always takes a little baby's hand and makes it hold my finger.

And so you get that, very early connection, with this beautiful little life that has just come into this world.

Which is incredible.

So people around the world, most people will never, ever have that experience.

So how do you instill that love and protection or conservation preservation?

Yeah, I mean, maybe I need to categorize what, what love really is and love is the external expression of your joy into the world.

As you know, if you're unhappy, you make the world unhappy, you snap at it.

But if you're happy, you want to share that happiness.

You want everyone to be happy and joyous.

And so often what we call love is just the modification of selfishness.

You may love your husband or your wife or your family, your community, or your country, but it's all about exclusion of others.

So it's outside your boundary of what you call love.

Real love comes out and has no boundaries, and so that needs to be, what is expressed.

You connect with the beauty in life, you connect with everything and not only you're spreading the joy out, you can see that connecting and flowing back to you and orangutans are perfect examples of this.

Because in many ways they're more noble form of person than the human being.

They're not capable of the horror that human beings are capable of.

So much horror and destruction.

Orangutans don't have that side, they're not capable of looking at another being, wanting to destroy them.

And this is probably because they have beautiful, nurturing, loving upbringing, which makes them very confident, independent, and self-assured in themselves.

So they're, not very needy.

They can really use expressing themselves as pure beings.

But of course the other part of your question as well, how can people connect.

. Well, one of the things I always recommend is coming on one of my tours where we go into the jungle, which is like coming home, you know, because we're involved in the jungle and have that experience and

It's kind of irrelevant., one of the popular things people want to do is save the whales, how many people have met a whale?.

Right.

Probably a very small fraction.

It's necessarily just knowledge.

Every child is mad about dinosaurs, who has never seen one, you know, passionate about it.

And so through knowledge and connection we can feel that we can expand a love to the most vulnerable persons on the planet.

But because they're not from this species, they have no rights and so at the most ineffective, most vulnerable persons on our planet and therefore needing so

And as mentioned, these things are all win-win for climate change, indigenous communities, all the other biodiversity, but to

circle back a life of selfless action and compassion for others, even those who can never give the feedback to us, never reward us even with a thank you or anything.

That actually ends up to be a life of absolute reward and fulfillment.

And so as we grow , we extend the compassion beyond people and beings that we've never even met.

We, we find that there's there's increasing reward not in name, fame, money or power, but in happiness as we become less and less selfish and more and more selfless.

That's certainly the hope for tomorrow.

There's people all over the world they really are seeking peace.

Leif recounts Temara's story from captivity back home into the wild.

Yeah, yeah.

Temara.

I ended up facilitating the inaudible of three orangutans from the zoo and Temara were the first one, in fact, the first zoo-born orangutan to ever go back to the wild.

And so, yeah, just taking on a journey from birth, being with her since she was born with her mother Puteri.

Then when she's at the natural age of dispersion, we, we made this huge fig tree in the middle of the, the middle of the city this huge fig tree that we, we had

And then we started speaking Indonesian and basically starting the journey there.

Then transporting her to Indonesia and then keeping her in a cage for two weeks as she climatized.

And then we would go out every morning, bringing the food into her, finding the fruit and bring it into her.

So she would learn and looking at all the different monkeys and insects and eating all the food.

And then of course, even the real journey starts when we open that cage and we let her out.

And then myself for the first bit and the Orangutan Project's project manager, Kylie was, with me.

And then eventually we handed over to the Indonesian technicians who then followed her for three years until she was able to totally survive on her own.

And then of course I had the privilege of going back to the jungle that we are protecting with wildlife protection units we fund and actually holding her hand in the forest.

For the first time it's two free independent persons

mutually connecting in, in her home environment.

Isn't that such a remarkable story.

That just, brings your work and working so hard to free them so that they continue to be free the rest of their lives in the wild.

Orangutan, that is particularly interesting to me as to the name and how ancient the name is,

"Orang" is, a person and "hutan" is is forest so uh, basically I mean means forest person.

Yeah, so that's Malaysian or Indonesian language.

That's been common use since early Dutch times in Indonesia,

And then the DNA.

That is something that we forget.

We learn it in high school, we learned it in college, but then we forget when we walk out what our DNA percentages are with the primates.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's two things.

Obviously we're a close relative of the orangutan.

But more importantly, we're both persons and I just quickly describe what that means.

A person is when there's consciousness, which experiences the world through thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

At a certain stage in the evolution of the mind the concept of individual identity comes up and connects the experiences of the past, present and future in a continuity

This is in sense symbolic of let's say in the Bible of the Apple of Knowledge where, you know they eat the apple of knowledge and suddenly becomes self-aware.

They know that I I'm this body, I am naked.

And course what happens then is they get expelled from the garden of Eden and have to suffer because as we all know, the vast majority of our suffering is mental.

So we can be living in a lack of luxury and the anxiety it's about the past and the worries about the future caused us suffering.

Orangutans have a very self-aware sense of individual identity.

This is why it makes it so much more important that we don't kill them and destroy them and make them suffer.

And reason why they cannot be kept in captivity humanely because persons including us, don't do well in captivity because we need to control who,

We know that animals all over the world are treated inhumanely and they are killed in horrific manners.

But we can't just, be reactionary, become active as you did.

Yeah.

I mean, there's two elements to this.

. We have to reform ourselves and we have to have some integrity.

We can't be saying we love animals and have them killed and eaten for the pleasure of their taste.

Ultimately it's for the benefit of everybody because, atom agriculture's causing one third of climate change and destroying the rainforest.

So we have to, one is to have that personal integrity, but then the other aspect to it is in order to achieve anything meaningful, we have to collectivize.

If I just become the most environmentally friendly individual and sit there and say, well, it's not me.

The world will still be destroyed because we have to collectivize to make meaningful actions.

And so the Orangutan Project is, is about one collectivizations and saying, okay, as individuals we have to have that individual integrity and action, but

Climate scientists tell us, and this is the same situation for the orangutans in the rainforest- after 10 years, the ecosystems and the climate will start collapsing on top of itself.

So we are living in the most important 10 years in a whole of human history of hundreds of thousands of years, as species has survived and existed.

And we can't pass that obligation on a few generations because it'd be too late.

And so we have to intelligently collectivize now to make the meaningful changes.

In this case, for us, it's about saving the orangutans.

But in that process intelligently saving orangutans for the benefit of all.

We are doing probably the most cost effective ways of saving the planet; cost effective ways of supporting women's rights in communities' cost effective way of supporting indigenous communities.

And by diversity in the economic future of Indonesia, all those things come along with it.

Because love and compassion for other beings, is a win-win situation from the individual to the, to the whole planet.

And selfishness not only helps destroy the planet but eventually it destroys the individual that seeks to gain through selfish actions.

I congratulate you for the way you live your life.

Your message is one of compassion and not judgmental.

Yeah.

I think that's very important.

We have to judge, but never be judgmental because in essence who we are, we're all flawed individuals.

There's no perfection in creation.

And so for us to judge others, is not right.

But also not effective in making meaningful change.

But in a broader context of what we're speaking about, we don't have to give up anything.

If we take up the higher, the lower just naturally falls off.

If we take up the mantle of love and compassion, the desire for meat, , just falls off.

If you find happiness within yourself to desire for alcohol to numb yourself temporarily just falls off it become well

what was the point?

In fact, trying to give anything up is always impossible because there's a natural resistance and we're fighting ourselves.

But if we take up the higher ideals in life, reform ourselves and find that love and joy and, and selfless service to others, all that stuff just drops off.

And others will, in a sense, look at your life and go, oh, you live a life of sacrifice.

And giving up things, for the cause.

And of course it could be farther from the truth.

You've picked up a life of selfless service service was full of joy, happiness, and reward.

And those things that people think are important that should make your life happy are just meaningless to you.

They just fall on the way.

, and of course it's the opposite.

Sometimes people try to reform the world without reform themselves.

Two things will happen.

Eventually the desire for name, fame power money will start destroying it because they're fighting all the other people.

They still need at this very selfish, painful level, this reward from outside to keep their egos going.

The other thing is they might feel to themselves, I'm sacrificing so much in me and then they get resentful.

I've sacrificed my life.

I could be earning more money.

I've done this and I've, and I haven't gotten any respect, reward or money.

You know, this is how they end up resentful at the end of the process.

And that's not the way.

You end up destroying everything you create.

The true path is selfless surrender.

So it's a win-win situation is what I'm describing.

And that's everything we need to do from, I will say it's not wildlife vs.

People, it's not the environment versus the economy.

It's not about you giving things up and suffering for others.

What I'm proposing is, is this possibility of this is a win-win for you, what you're trying to achieve and how you collectivize with others to key some meaningful impact in the world and the entire planet.

When I go into stores, I read the ingredients, both my husband and I do.

We're very conscientious about what we purchase.

And so that brings me to the Palm oil.

Palm oil to not have it at all is not a solution to saving the orangutan.

How are we going to move the populations forward?

Leif explains indiscriminate charity.

Ultimately it's about compassion for others, but more specifically is what we know is indiscriminate charity causes more problems in the world than creates and things like going Palm oil free

it does a couple of things and it doesn't achieve anything in the real world.

Actually reduces the capacity for organizations to do things because people say, well, I've done my bit and therefore they don't contribute and collectivize.

So it's actually a double negative.

They're not achieving anything.

Uh, and secondly, that, because they feel that they've been or, they've been told they're achieving something, then they, they, they don't actually engage and collectivize with others to make a meaningful change.

So what we're trying to do, and I call this intelligent actions.

George Bernard Shaw once said his most intelligent man I ever met was his tailor.

And when asked why why his tailor was the most intelligent man because George he was considered a very intelligent man.

So he said, because every time I go in, he takes new measurements.

In other words, he always checked for new information and made a decision based on direct observation and never relied on previous past information.

So similarly let's say we're trying to save a rainforest and somebody would come along it's educating local people or they'll say planting trees.

And so it's a bit like I'm going to a doctor with an ailment different ailments each time and he gives you the same medicine, the same dosage.

He really, oh, well, hold it.

You know, you, you are a quack and conservation is like that.

Let's plant trees.

Let's have rangers.

Let's have community education.

Yeah.

But what you need to do is look at each ecosystem, know about how it needs to be pieced together, for, that ecosystem to survive.

And then you look at what the disease on an ecosystem.

Does it need protection, does it need community development.

Does it need orangutan re-introduction to reestablish an extinct population.

What does it need??

And then you diagnose the disease and put the application and right medicine, the right dosage.

Yeah.

And so that's, what's in intelligent application.

Let's say the anti Palm Oil people achieve their aim and tomorrow palm oil were banned the forest would still disappear because essentially they're cutting the forest down

And if palm oil was the only thing that you can gain profit from destroying forest you could do something, but it's not, they'll plant sugar Palm they'll plant rubber they'll plant pulp

Oh, okay.

That company is no longer going to influence government to get the forest and destroy it.

And then there's 20 other companies that simply move in and destroy that same forest the next day.

You know, because it's about land use planning.

It's about protection.

It's about government regulations.

These things which protect forests, the companies may influence that.

Yeah.

But there's many companies influencing that.

And so this is why so many good people have been working for conservation for 20, 30 years and the rain forest just keeps disappearing, disappearing, disappearing.

And my proposition that we don't have time to play anymore.

We need to look at each ecosystem that we can piece together and survive the, this extinction crisis and apply specific knowledge in specific actions.

Unfortunately, it's really dreadful for marketing.

Marketing you want a simple solution,- plant a tree, build a wall.

These kinds of simplistic solutions where the positive and negative capture people's imagination

that's what people want.

In a time of crisis, our psychology we want a strong man to say that one simple solution was, you've got to save the tribe.

You know, this is, this is why everyone gets hoodwinked.

It's very appealing to a tribal mind.

That's why with, autocratic regime, the autocrats are falling into favor now, in America or in England and elsewhere because our tribal brain is not fully adapted to survive in such a complex world.

It's no fault of anybody to get pick up on simple solution and engage in it.

What we're seeing is every civilization, from south America or the Mesopotamia, it's actually fallen down through ecological destruction of its immediate environment, ; agriculture developed

We're seeing it and we're doing this on a global scale and we're just following the same traditional pattern, watching our civilization slowly reach the limits of this

And we're going to collapse in on itself, but we have the opportunity one for a better word, spiritual and moral evolution.

So we have as human beings, this capacity, to come out of that tribal framework, we have this opportunity now.

So, we all should just give it our best shot.

Part two with icon Leif Cocks next week.

To learn more check out LeifCox.org, L E I F C O C K S or TheOrangutangProject.org and include the word the.

Orangutan is O R AN G U T AN.

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