Want to get in touch with nature but don’t want to leave your cubicle?

Now you can teleport to Conservation Island, a virtual world built by the World Wildlife Fund into the popular online computer game called Second Life. Your digital self, called an avatar, can chat with an elephant or a panda about important environmental issues in the real world.

Seek out Mr. Tangee, the ice cream selling orangutan shown above and he will share the problems of worldwide soy production.

With almost nine million registered users, WWF is betting that this online marketing campaign’s buzz will drive traffic to their educational site, panda.org. Whether the nonprofit can then persuade some passive people to take action in the natural world remains to be seen.

The campaign was developed by Enable Interactive, a UK-based digital ad shop.

By Stefan Deeran, at The Element Agency in New York