My mission to save the apes

Nearly 50 years later she is finally to fulfil her long-held ambition and see animals like it in the wild. The 51-year-old tax consultant will this September tackle the Sumatran rainforest to see first hand under-threat orang-utans in their natural environment – and help to protect wildlife for future generations.

Katy, who says she has been fascinated by primates for years, has sponsored orang-utans both in England and worldwide for the past two decades.

“It is like looking into someone’s soul when you look into their eyes. You can’t understand how someone could mistreat them,” said Katy, from Acomb in York.

“I did lose the photograph of me and the monkey, but it was one I always remember. My friend’s mum managed to get me a copy of it and I was so relieved when she found it.”

Katy, who had been telling friends how she hoped to go to Borneo for years, saw details of the trek quite by chance in a leaflet at work. It was like it was meant to be.

Now she is busy fundraising to help with the £3,500 needed for the trip organised by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust UK which will also include rebuilding the rainforest. The charity works towards saving species from extinction and helps some of the most endangered animals across the world.

“I don’t know why I looked through it. It just seemed like fate,” she said.

She will also be funding the trip with some money she was given after her father died.

“I have never done anything with the money and my dad loved animals as well. I am sure it is something he would have approved of. There are some people doing fantastic work,” she said.

It’s not the first charity trek she has done.

She tackled the Himalayas for Mencap and to help get in shape for her trip will take part in the 14-mile Peak District Walk in April, organised by Jane Tomlinson’s Walk For All.

She signed up to this and the trip to Sumatra on her own, but says walkers are friendly and so it is easy to get chatting. She has done the Jane Tomlinson walk on her own before – and ended up walking the whole way with someone she got talking to in the breakfast queue.

For her, the important thing is to help protect animals.

The orang-utans she sponsors include Hercules who as a youngster was 
kept illegally as a pet in a small cramped cage with no room to move around 
or stand up.

His crippled hands and feet mean he cannot climb to the top of trees, but now, thanks to help from a rehabilitation centre, he is free to enjoy his natural environment with staff on hand to make sure he has plenty of food.

She also made a special visit to Monkey World rescue centre in Dorset when she turned 50 to see an orang-utan called Dinda who she had been helping. Monkey World works to stop animals being smuggled from the wild and helps those that have been.

“Some people are so selfish they do not think about the world as a whole they just think about themselves. What would the world be like if we killed out all the animals? I know what I do is just a drop in the ocean.

“It is trying to get people to see things in the same way as well. If we destroy the planet there is not going to be that much in the future.”