AN eight-year-old from Moore who hopes to become a zookeeper is one of the first to support a campaign to save orangutans in the wild.

Zoe Povey is also one of the youngest people so far to swing into action to help Chester Zoo's Go Orange for Orangutans fundraising appeal 2014.

The Moore Primary School pupil and a member of the 1st Moore Brownies pledged her support for the appeal after reading about it on the zoo's website while studying for a project.

She sprung to action to help raise £50 and now she is hoping to get her family involved in raising more.

Her mum Wendy said: “It started when Zoe was working towards achieving her latest Brownie badge. Part of the task was to research an endangered animal. She chose an orangutan because at the time her school class was doing a project on the rainforests.”

Zoe visited the zoo's Realm of the Red Ape to see the orangutans there, then she read up on the zoo's website about the plight of critically endangered orangutans in the wild.

“Even at her young age she realised how devastating it would be if the world were to lose these threatened animals," added Wendy. "So Zoe decided off her own bat that she wanted to help the appeal.

She registered on the website and the organisers sent us some orange wristbands which she sold for £1 each at school and Brownies. She also baked orange coloured cup-cakes and sold them to raise more funds.”

Chester Zoo's development manager, Melanie Cowieson, said: “We are so grateful to people like Zoe for helping us get this appeal off the ground. It is especially important for younger generations to get involved because it is they who will be the guardians of these threatened species in the future.”

The appeal aims to reach £15,000 to replant a key area of woodland in Borneo where 80 per cent of the habitat once occupied by orangutans has been destroyed.

To find out more visit actforwildlife.org.uk/orange.