A TAN-tastic team of Chester Zoo staff have gone orange all over in a sponsored fundraising feat which has already raised more than £1,000 to help save critically endangered orangutans from extinction.
They bravely volunteered for an all over body spray tan in a deep shade of orange.
The tangerine ten stepped up to the plate to support Chester Zoo’s Go Orange for Orangutans 2014 appeal in which they are encouraging the public to hold orange-themed fundraising activities.
Among the group was the zoo’s director general Dr Mark Pilgrim, vet Steve Unwin, head of commercial operations Dominic Strange and head of field programmes Scott Wilson.
As well as being spray tanned, they agreed to have the phrase Go Orange stencilled on their forearms.
The zoo’s head of marketing Caroline Sanger Davies, who was also among the ten, said: “I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, but in the end it wasn’t as bad as I feared. I had plenty of support and sympathy from my fellow ‘oranges’. Now we will wait and see how we develop overnight.”
Conservation assistant Naomi Matthews, one of the Tan-tastic ten, who were spray tanned for Chester zoo's Go Orange for Orangutans 2014 fundraising appeal.
The goal of Go Orange for Orangutans 2014 is to raise £15,000 to help replant a part of the rainforest in Sabah, Borneo, where orangutans live in the wild. In recent decades 80 per cent of the habitat they once occupied has been destroyed, due to the unregulated development of commercial palm oil plantations.
Now the hope is to restore a vital corridor of forestry to prevent orangutan groups from becoming segregated from each other and isolated.
Chester Zoo has been encouraged by the positive response from schools, businesses and individuals all over the UK who have got behind the fundraising appeal.
The spray tan adventure has so far raised £1,080 via sponsorship money from fellow zoo staff, friends, family and the public who challenged them to go orange.
Also in the group were assistant conservation officer, James Probert; zoo ranger, Laura Myers; Twilight team manager, Dave White; conservation assistant Naomi Matthews and biodiversity officer Sarah Bird.
Sarah said: “Having a laugh whilst being sprayed helped with the embarrassment. The worst bit was watching the colour develop in the evening and not knowing what colour you would be when you woke up the following morning. My husband made a few unrepeatable comments! And the R and A stencils on my arm didn’t stick very well so it says ‘Go O NGE’.”
Naomi added: “As I was the last person to be spray tanned, just entering the shower room was enough to turn me orange. The whole room was filled with mist and the floor was coated so the soles of my feet have definitely gone orange.
“A huge thank you to everyone involved - the 10 who got tanned; Sam and Alex from Mollington Banastre hotel and spa, Chester, for spraying us; and all the people who sponsored us. It might have been a humiliating experience but we made it fun and most of all it was for a good cause.”
To find out more about Go Orange for Orangutans 2014 and for ideas about how to help with fundraising, click here.
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