Rock of Apes VI

Ronna Phelps has been involved with orangutan conservation for more than 20 years and is actively involved with many different conservation organizations and endeavors. She notably developed the first nationally and internationally distributed palm oil-free body care line. Ronna has worked with many schools to educate children and teachers about the palm-oil crisis that faces the forest and its inhabitants in Indonesia and Malaysia, and volunteers on a regular basis at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, FL, where she also serves as a board member. Ronna Phelps also volunteered at the Denver Zoo for 25 years.  In October 2014, she received the Pongo Award for her work in the beauty and healthcare industry, presented by Dr Gary Shapiro of Orangutan Republik and the actor and environmentalist, Ed Begley Jr.. More recently in March of  2022 Ronna joined the board of The Orang-utan Conservation Genetics Project.In September of 2021 Pongo Lifestyle opened a retail location in historic Downtown Littleton, Colorado.The Pongo Lifestyle retail location highlights the Pongo Lifestyle line of bodycare  and offers a wide range of products from clothing to household products.The products carried at Pongo Lifestyle support small businesses, socially concious, and ecolocical companies.

Pongo Lifestyle

"Rock of Apes VI"  is an evening full of music, fun and education while supporting Great Apes around the world!

Wellshire Event Center

Welcome to &quot;Rock of Apes VI&quot;! A fun and informative evening awaits you, commencing with short talks on research and conservation by world-leading great ape experts, and concluding with a concert featuring &quot;Funkiphino&quot; — Colorado&#x27;s favorite band .Entry includes two drink tickets, redeemable for some of our signature cocktails, wine or beer. A full cash bar will be available, alongside a delicious appetizers and a sit down dinner. Enjoy the chance to bid on some spectacular items in our silent auction. All proceeds from the evening go to Great Ape conservation and research, supporting the projects of our speakers.Doors open at 5:30pm, as does the silent auction and happy hour. Come early, get a good seat, and start eating, drinking and bidding in support of great apes! The presenters start at 6:30 pm to 8 pm, with plenty of short intervals to top up your glass and check in on your bidding. &quot;Funkiphino&quot; will take the stage from 7:30pm till 11:00. The dress for the evening is rocker chic: wear what you would if you were going to a concert; this is not a black tie affair!This year we will also be awarding some lucky concert goer a special prize for best &quot;Rocker Wear&quot;!DR GRAHAM L BANESDr Graham L Banes returns for Rock of Apes VI, in his sixteenth year of studying orang-utans. As a field researcher, Dr Banes was primarily based in Borneo&#x27;s Tanjung Puting National Park, where he studied wild and ex-captive orang-utans, disentangled their social and sexual behavior, and determined that historical reintroductions have led to hybridization in the wild between subspecies. His discoveries have been featured extensively in the international press, notably by The Washington Post, in Science magazine, and in the PBS documentary, Sex in the Wild: Orangutans. Dr Banes studied Zoology at the University of British Columbia, Canada before graduating from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He later earned Master&#x27;s and doctoral degrees from the University of Cambridge, following an 18-month residency at Germany&#x27;s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. As a President&#x27;s International Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he then visited and worked with more than 150 zoos across China and was profiled in the Chinese language by The New York Times. Dr Banes was then appointed as an Assistant Professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before joining the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center in June 2019. He returns to tell us more about his ongoing work in orang-utan research and conservation, now funded in part with the proceeds of Rock of Apes II through V. Dr Banes insists on spelling &#x27;orang-utan&#x27; in proper British English with a hyphen, not least because it comes from two Malay words: &#x27;orang&#x27; (meaning &#x27;person&#x27;) and &#x27;hutan&#x27; (meaning &#x27;forest&#x27;). Come early and start drinking long before he does. Learn more about his work at www.grahamlbanes.com.PATTI RAGANPatti Ragan is the founder of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, FL, which provides a permanent sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees who have been rescued or retired from the entertainment industry, from research, or from the exotic pet trade. The Center has its roots in the rainforests of Tanjung Puting National Park, where, in 1984, Patti Ragan spent several months volunteering on a rehabilitation project for wild orangutans. During this intense time of living with orangutans and gaining experience caring for orphaned infants, Patti learned to love and appreciate the quiet and gentle nature of these animals. She was subsequently asked in 1990 to help care for a four-week old infant orangutan who was held at a tourist attraction in Miami. Believing that the infant was going to eventually be sent to live with other orangutans at an AZA-accredited zoo, she was surprised to learn that the owner intended to sell the baby orangutan to a circus trainer. However, because of a serious illness that affected the infant, he was not sold and the owner agreed to allow Patti the opportunity to find an appropriate home for the infant. She soon learned that accredited zoos did not want a mixed Bornean/Sumatran orangutan, especially one that was hand-raised. Realizing that there were no opportunities for placement in an accredited zoo, and that there would never be a chance for him to live in the wild, Patti set out to find a sanctuary for the orangutan infant: there wasn&#x27;t one. Shortly thereafter, she was asked to care for a three-month-old baby chimpanzee — and quickly decided to start her own sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees. Four years later, in beautiful and tropical wooded habitat surrounded by orange groves and away from development, Patti opened what is now the Center for Great Apes: more than 100 acres of sanctuary for chimpanzees and orangutans. She returns to Rock of Apes to update us on the sanctuary&#x27;s progress over the last year, which benefitted from part of the proceeds from Rock of Apes I, II, III,IV, and V.DR GARY SHAPIRODr Gary Shapiro was the first person (1973-1975) to teach a symbolic communication system to an orangutan (at what is now Fresno Chaffee Zoo, CA) and the first person to teach sign language to orangutans in the species&#x27; natural environment, in the forests of Indonesia&#x27;s Tanjung Puting National Park (1978-1980; 1981). It was there that he met his adopted daughter, Princess: an orangutan who learned more than 40 signs, which she used to express her interests, to ask for items and to describe her environment. Princess also joined seven other orangutans in a study of sign learning which became Dr Shapiro&#x27;s dissertation project. During his time in Indonesian Borneo, he also assisted in the rehabilitation efforts of dozens of orangutans confiscated from the illegal pet trade and monitored the phenology of local rain forest ecosystem. Dr Shapiro received his doctorate in Zoology in 1985 from the University of Oklahoma, returning to Tanjung Puting the following year to conduct post-doctoral freshwater ecology studies. He was later the co-founder and vice president of the Orangutan Foundation International (1986-2004) where he administered and oversaw the activities supporting research and conservation in and around Tanjung Puting National Park. In late 2004, Dr Shapiro and his Indonesian wife, Inggriani, were inspired to create the Orang Utan Republik Foundation (OURF) in response to the education needs underscoring the crisis facing orangutans today, particularly in Sumatra. OURF also serves as the US chapter of The Orangutan Project. Dr Shapiro returns to Rock of Apes to briefly share updates from OURF&#x27;s Orangutan Caring Scholarship program, having awarded 216 scholarships to Indonesian student and 11 research grants to deserving Indonesian and international students (2006-2019). Recent scholarships were partly funded with the proceeds of Rock of Apes I, II,III,IV,and V. Learn more at www.orangutanrepublik.org.

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Rock of Apes VI

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Rock of Apes VI

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