RESCUE: Leif's mission is done out of love

Not a rare sight... Leif Cocks holds an orang-utan in his arms. "They're surprisingly like a human." Source: Supplied

It's not always an easy mission trying to save these animals. Source: Supplied

• Meet Leif Cocks, a man on a mission
• Few Aussies have the gall to do what he does
• Inside the desperate effort to save special animals

FOR nearly six months of every year, you can find West Australian man Leif Cocks trekking through the jungle, on a mission to save his friends. His friends, the orang-utans.

It's an extraordinarily dangerous exercise. There's malaria and swarms of bees, tumbling trees and unstable bridges. Gastro and the odd armed goon, hired by companies that want to mow down forests in our neighbouring countries.

And sadly, it's common for those on Cocks’s team - locals who care about the tree-dwelling apes, found only in Sumatra and Borneo - to die. There’s almost one death every year.

"Once you enter the third world, safety and the presence of death become much more a concern," said Cocks, 48, who has dedicated more than half his life to saving the orang-utans as a Perth zookeeper and founder of the Australian Orang-utan Project.

Cocks talked to news.com.au about the risky missions he has carried out to rescue the orang-utan, and his greater plans to conserve wildlife.

Not many activists like him have the gall to camp in a jungle to save endangered animals. But the job needs to be done.

The orang-utan share 98 per cent of our DNA. They're incredibly similar to humans. That extra two per cent has given us humans a hell of a lot, though. For one, there are seven billion of us. There are just 7000 of the Sumatran orang-utan, who are classified as critically endangered.

That's because the forests the orang-utans live in are being crashed through by companies trying to feed the world's thirst for paper and palm oil. And before the tigers, with their elaborate patterned fur, before the elephants, who are surprisingly agile, it's the great apes that are the first to suffer.

Almost 80 per cent of forest in Indonesia and Malaysia, which would be home to the orang-utans, has been lost in the past 20 years, according to Borneo Orang-utan Survival in Australia.

Wasteland: What a mowed down habitat looks like. Elephants or orang-utans don't last long here. Source: Supplied

When their forest is taken away, they starve to death, said Cocks. They start preying on farms, and are hunted by farmers as agricultural pests.

"Unlike an elephant, an orang-utan won’t hurt you either," a fired-up Cocks told news.com.au.

It doesn’t help that the female orang-utans - often described as the most loving creatures on Earth - are unable to reproduce until they are quite old, at about 14 to 16 years.

Cocks and his team do dirty, dangerous work. The volunteers often sleep on the floor in corridors, huts and tents. Altercations with hired corporate goons, who want to clear the forest of any trouble, are common.

Most Australians "go running out of the forest screaming when they have a stint in the jungle," he laughs.

It takes more than bravery to survive the dangers of the jungle - it takes passion and a lot of love.

The orang-utans aren't just another animal to Cocks. He said they are intelligent and evolved and "basically another person".

"You can communicate with them. They have friendships and moods and mood swings, and they’re capable of great passion."

Cocks has spent years with the orang-utans, watching over four generations - baby, mother, aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother. If they were humans, they'd surely be around his dinner table at Christmas time.

"Females are passionate about their infants, they’re the most loving of all animals. A lot better than humans. He said the males were "different characters" and they had only two things on their mind - sex and food. Not unlike many males, some would argue.

After all this time, Cocks is now turning his passion to another cause. On Friday, he announced an initiative to protect the Asian elephant, who share the same forests as the orang-utans. There’s less than 1600 left in Sumatra - an alarming number - which is why Cocks has started the International Elephant Project.

Their homes are also disappearing. "There's nowhere else to go," Cocks said. And that's not the only issue.

Elephants are not peaceful creatures like orang-utans. They fight. And in the Bukit Tigapuluh region of Sumatra, just 140 elephants occupy the same area as 8000 people. They don’t have much room to live.

The Asian elephant is under serious threat. This one gets tended to by a local protection patrolman. Source: news.com.au

They become a nuisance, and both humans and elephants have died in conflicts.

The elephant defence project is an expansion of his organisation's protection work for orang-utans. Like with the Orang-utan Project, Cocks allows people to 'adopt' an elephant. The funds go towards protecting Sumatran elephants, and their herds.

Cocks, who grew up in 1960s Hong Kong, where neighbours would keep tigers on their roof, has spent a long time fighting for these animals. And he has developed an interesting theory about their future. They should have rights, just like us.

"A hundred years ago, if I was saying we shouldn’t be keeping blacks as slave I’d probably be a radical," he said. "Orang-utans and elephants should be considered to have rights, to live free and in the environment free of exploitation and murder."

"It sounds a bit radical now," he said.

But this man knows these animals much better than anyone else.

Email Daniel Piotrowski or follow @drpiotrowski on Twitter for more stories like this

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