19/08/2020
We're trekking through a steamy 130-million-year-old jungle in Malaysian Borneo. This place is truly alive, with over 500 species of mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian. Ambling the trails in the swaddling heat, listening past the cicada song and the calling hornbill, our ears prick to a rustling overhead. Swiftly and silently, we follow the sound and shadow in the canopy of the towering dipterocarp trees until we make out tufts of fiery red hair. A mother orangutan cradling her infant propels herself from tree to tree, plucking fresh figs in transit. We gawp up, our necks craned, in awe.
Today on , we – and , co-founders of Another Escape – reflect on how privileged we are to have seen such a sight firsthand, thanks to . Being in the Bornean rainforest was a life-changing experience, and places like this really bring home how impoverished our country (UK) is of biodiversity. We once shared this land with such a wealth of species. To see a functioning and thriving ecosystem such as we did in Borneo left us both feeling immensely happy and heavily grief-stricken. Grief for our own homeland and its inhabitants. And grief for this incredible place too.
Bornean orangutans – as well as many other species on the island – have fallen victim to the rapid destruction of rainforest to make way for cash crops, mainly oil palm. According to WWF, “the species' habitat has been reduced by at least 55% over the past 20 years.” It is believed that in the past 60 years, Bornean orangutan numbers have fallen by over half, and there's the mounting fear that there may soon be no turning back for the population’s decline.
Having experienced these ancient forests and their remarkable wildlife firsthand, we felt strongly compelled to highlight them in a meaningful way. This is when we met the Harrison brothers, Ed and James, one a designer and the other a printmaker, who are the co-founders of . We decided to collaborate in creating The Wallaces Series, a print series of endangered animals from the Malay Archipelago, inspired by the travels and theories of naturalist-explorer Alfred Russel Wallace.