This September, we invite you to celebrate our 12th annual Slow and Slender Loris Outreach Week! You may be more familiar with celebrating this week in October. However, our collaborators Plumploris e.v. also had an idea of an international slow loris day back in 2018. This day started, like SLOW, to pick up speed and recognition, and as nice as it is to think about lorises and their cousins the pottos and angwantibos EVERY DAY, it seems best to link international celebrations together. Thus from now on, SLOW will start the closest Monday to World Loris Day on the 13th of September, recognising the day that slow lorises were transferred to CITES Appendix 1, but also the whole week, we want to bring awareness to all lorises and pottos.

With that in mind, there is some amazing and breaking news! In August, I visited our LFP field station in Java, as well as the International Primate Society conference in Kuching, Borneo. For two decades, I have been a member of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and noted that whole time how under-represented “non-lemur” nocturnal primates have been. It is exciting to announce that I am now leading an Afro-Asian Nocturnal Primates Special Section of the IUCN Primates Specialist Group. Along with Dr Myron Shekelle (tarsiers) and Luca Pozzi (galagos), a number of leading experts will join with us as the chairs of this group to provide in situ training for the study of nocturnal primates, support funding for their studies, provide an outlet for exchange of information and conservation outreach techniques, and simply raise awareness of the dearth of information on nearly 60 species or 10% of all primates!

This links to our theme for SLOW this year – that of environmental education. So often conservation education and outreach programmes focus on the large charismatic species. Although all species are important, it is truly vital to know the species that live around you, be they insects, plants or small brown nocturnal mammals and birds….because if you do not know their names, do not know their calls, do not even know they are there, you will not realise they have disappeared. This is a concept call ecological blindness, often attributed mainly to plants, but very relatable also to obscure and little known nocturnal animals. 

So for this year’s SLOW, wherever you are, open your eyes to the hidden beauties around you. Discover a new species, even a tree in your park that you never knew the species of before. As Jane Austen said, “But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.” So tell a friend about a loris or potto that has never heard of them before – help to spread the loris love and to keep these precious animals wild and free!

Anna Nekaris – Oxford

Slow Loris Talk Show- How to Register

Sign up now to join our FREE talk show (in Bahasa Indonesia) happening Saturday the 16th of September, 8:30 AM Indonesia time! Register here