Two members of the Cameron Park Zoo staff traveled to China to share their expertise on orangutans.
Last week, Cameron Park Zoo Interim Director, Johnny Binder, and Terri Cox, Programs & Exhibits Curator gave a presentation about orangutan exhibits at the China National Orang-utan Workshop the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens hosted.
According to Binder, the workshop held at the Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo is the first Chinese government that has hosted a non-endemic species in that country.
Cox said out of the 200 accredit institutions in the U.S., six people were asked to present.
"Part of that was based in the success of the exhibit, the orangutan exhibit, and it was quite an honor to be asked to be there," Cox said.
Binder and Cox wrote a chapter for the Chinese language Orang-utan Husbandry manual about exhibit design and development, which will be released at the workshop and will be published by the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens.
"It was really fun and an honor to be asked to contribute to the manual. The manual will be used by the 35 zoos in China to review what is going on the world and the United States with the management of orangutans," Binder said. "Orangutans are one of the world's most critically endangered species and without a lot of human involvement they would disappear from the planet in the next two or three decades."
According to zoo staff, the workshop is the culmination of six years of planning and preparation by University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Dr. Graham L. Banes, the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens and the management of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo.
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