Orangutan Foundation

Category: Local Communities, Oil Palm Plantations, Sumatran Orangutans, Uncategorized | Date: Oct 02 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

Please follow this link to view a short piece on the Sumatran orangutans, with a focus on the Tripa Swamps, Aceh, Sumatra that appeared in Times.com.

http://www.time.com/time/audioslide/0,32187,1926657,00.html

Tags: images, oil palm, photos, sumatran orangutan, Tripa

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Category: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Oil Palm Plantations, Uncategorized | Date: Jul 28 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

Lamandau Ecosystem Conservation Partnership (LECP) recently helped facilitate meetings in order to increase protection to the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve Buffer Zone Area.

 Meeting between government and oil-palm companies faciliated by Lamandau Ecosystem Conservation Partnership (funded by the EU).

Finally, on July 13 2009, the Indonesian Government Agency for the Conservation of Natural Resources of Central Borneo (BKSDA) and two oil palm plantation companies, which have their plantation area close to or on the border of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve area, signed the Memorandum of Understanding and Memorandum of Agreement, witnessed by Kotawaringin Barat and Sukamara District Government. The two companies are Sungai Rangit, Co. Ltd. and Bumitama Gunajaya Abadi, (BGA) Co. Ltd. 

According to Chief of BKSDA of Central Borneo, Mr. Mega Hariyanto, the memorandum is  the first Memorandum of Understanding in Indonesia on a conservation area’s buffer zone, that has been established by government and private sector.

The companies, BGA and Sungai Rangit, are willing not to plant and do any business activities within a radius of 500 meters outside of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve buffer area. This is also very important as the reserve is a government designated orangutan release site. 

Below is a translated quotation from a local newspaper, Borneonews, on the memorandum assignation:  

BKSDA and Company made MoU on Conservation of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve Thursday, July 23, 2009 |

‘Borneo News Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve which is situated at Kotawaringin Barat, Central Borneo is a conservation area which needs a protection. Related to its conservation, the management of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve under coordination of the Indonesian Government Agency for the Conservation of Natural Resources has made a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with two companies which operated side by side with Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve.  Namely, Bumitama Guna Jaya Abadi (BGA), Co. Ltd which is situated at Kotawaringin Barat and Sungai Rangit, Co. Ltd. which is situated at Sukamara District are the two companies.  There are six important points that concluded within the agreement. Which are: BGA and Sungai Rangit are prohibited to do land clearing for plantation or any purposes in surrounding Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve.  BGA and Sungai Rangit is willing not to plant and doing any business activities within radius of 500 meters outside of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve buffer area.  Both BGA and Sungai Rangit have to cooperate and accompanied by BKSDA to prevent forest fire in surrounding Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve. BGA and Sungai Rangit are obligated to make a report to BKSDA on the existence of orangutan and other protected wildlife if they were entering in plantation area.  BGA and Sungai Rangit also support BKSDA of Central Borneo socialization activity to community, and both companies should report to BKSDA of Central Borneo if there are any indication of illegal activity arround of Lamandau Wildlife Reserve appears.  Chief of BKSDA of Central Borneo Mega Harianto explained that one of reason to establish the agreement is issue on emission reduction caused by global warming that will harm environment.  ”This understanding and agreement is an initial point in building socialization on environment awareness surrounding Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve and both companies” Mega said.  Continued by Mega, the agreement is necessary established since management of Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve has been doing more effort to handle problems within its area, compared to manage Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve natural resources it self.  

In the other side, Second Assistance Regional Secretary of Kotawaringin Barat Regency, M. Sayrifudin emphasized that rules on area are necessary built by government at province or higher level in order to keep Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve from residence.’

Thank you,

Astri

Orangutan Foundation Liaison Office

Tags: buffer zones, forests, Indonesia, oil palm

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Category: Forest Fires, Oil Palm Plantations, Orangutans, Sumatran Orangutans | Date: Jun 23 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

This article was published in the Independent newspaper today and covers the urgent situation in the Tripa Swamps, Aceh Sumatra. Read the full article with photos ‘Oil boom threatens the last orang-utans’.

‘A famous British company, Jardines, is profiting as the lowland forest – which shelters the few remaining orang-utans – is razed to make way for massive palm oil plantations, reports Kathy Marks in Tripa, Indonesia.

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Perched halfway up a tree near a bend in the Seumayan River, a young orang-utan lounges on a branch, eating fruit. In the distance, smoke rises from an illegal fire, one of dozens lit to wipe out the virgin rainforest and replace it with oil palm plantations.

It’s burning season on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, where vast tracts of vegetation are being torched and clear-felled to meet the soaring global demand for palm oil. The pace is especially frenzied in the peat swamp forests of the Tripa region, one of the final refuges of the critically endangered orang-utan – and a company owned by one of Britain’s most venerable trading groups is among those leading the destructive charge.

Prized for its productiveness and versatility, palm oil is used in everything from lipstick and detergent to chocolate, crisps and biofuels. Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s biggest palm oil producers – but they also shelter the last remaining orang-utans, found only on Sumatra and Borneo islands in the same lowland forests that are being razed to make way for massive plantations.

In Indonesia, one of the largest palm oil companies is Astra Agro Lestari, a subsidiary of Astra International, a Jakarta-based conglomerate which is itself part of Jardine Matheson, a 177-year-old group that made a fortune from the Chinese opium trade and is still controlled by a Scottish family, the Keswicks, descendants of the original founders.

Conservation groups are targeting supermarkets in Britain to alert consumers to the effects of the palm oil explosion. But The Independent can reveal that Jardines, registered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange, is implicated through Astra Agro in ripping out the final vestiges of orang-utan habitat.

Environmentalists are dismayed by the activities of Astra Agro, one of the main companies operating in Tripa under permits that were awarded during the 1990s by the notoriously corrupt Suharto government. They point out that Tripa belongs to the nominally protected Leuser Eco-System, renowned for its exceptional biodiversity, and claim that the plantation businesses are contravening a logging moratorium as well as engaging in illegal practices including burning land.

Greenpeace UK says: “It’s scandalous that a British company is bankrolling the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands. We need to see big firms like Jardines withdrawing investment from companies involved in rainforest clearance.”

Orang-utans are vanishing at an alarming rate in Borneo but in Sumatra their situation is even more precarious. The Sumatran orang-utan – more intelligent and sociable than its Borneo cousin and with a unique culture of tool use – is likely to be the first great ape species to go extinct.

There are believed to be just 6,600 individuals left, mostly living in unprotected areas of Aceh province. Their lowland forests remained relatively undisturbed during the long-running separatist war in Aceh, but since a peace agreement was signed in 2005, it has been open season.

The primates are now splintered across 11 pockets of jungle, with only three populations considered viable. Another three, including Tripa, are borderline viable. Elsewhere, the orang-utans – which use sticks to extract insects from trees and seeds from fruit – are effectively extinct. As their territory shrinks, along with their food supplies, the apes are increasingly coming into conflict with humans. Farmers shoot those caught raiding crops; babies are captured and sold as pets. Adults discovered in oil palm plantations may be hacked to death with machetes.

In Tripa, more than half of the 62,000 hectares of ancient forest has gone. As well as being home to endangered species including the sun bear and clouded leopard, the peat swamps acted as a protective buffer during the 2004 tsunami. They also hold gigantic carbon stocks which are now being released, exacerbating climate change. “If you can’t save Tripa, what can you save?” asks Denis Ruysschaert, forest co-ordinator for PanEco, a Swiss environmental organisation.

Sumatra is a beautiful island, with jungle-clad mountains and picturesque villages where long-horned water buffalo wander. But it is difficult not to be shocked by the colonisation of the landscape by one short, stumpy tree: oil palm. The monoculture is a desolate sight, stretching for miles, relieved only by charred hillsides dotted with tree stumps – cleared land awaiting yet more oil palms. Trucks rattle past, laden with the prickly red fruit from which oil is extracted. In Aceh, they call it the “golden plant” – the cash crop that is lifting the province out of poverty and helping it rebuild after the tsunami. “Recently there’s a frenzy to plant oil palm,” says Fransisca Ariantiningsih, who works for Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (Yel), an Indonesian conservation group.

On Sumatra’s west coast, a small-time farmer, Raluwan, is nursing his seedlings. Ten families, he explains, have logged and burnt 100 hectares of land. Each hectare will yield four tonnes of fruit, fetching 800 Rupiah (47 pence) a kilo.”I used to grow chilli, but palm oil is a very economical crop,” he declares. “You don’t need much pesticide or fertiliser.” Raluwan knows orang-utans live in the nearby forests. “I don’t care,” he says. “I’ve got to feed my family.”

However, many are missing out as the industry grows to meet demand from Europe, the US, China and India. Most plantation workers are migrants from Java and in Tripa, communities that depend on the swamps for water, fish and medicinal plants are suffering.

Kuala Seumayan is hemmed in by plantations. Villagers say they no longer have space even to bury their dead. “Since the forest has been chopped down, it’s difficult to get food,” says one elder, Darmizi. In the Seumayan River, youngsters dive for freshwater clams while children squeal and splash in the placid brown waters. It’s an idyllic scene, but something is missing: the sights and sounds of the forest. The only wildlife consists of a hornbill and two long-tailed macaques. Indrianto, a forestry manager, says: “This used to be all peat swamp, with many trees and animals. Now it’s all oil palm. Before, I heard animal calls. Now I hear only chainsaws.”

By chance, we spot an orang-utan in a solitary tree. Tripa has just 280 apes left. The young male, its fur glowing in the afternoon sun, curls one arm lazily over an upper branch.

A black slick floats on the water: sludge from one of many canals dug to drain the swamps. The arduous procedure is considered preferable to planting on fallow land, which would require negotiations with landowners. This way, the companies also get to sell the timber. As you fly over Tripa, the scale of destruction becomes clear. The green tangle of the forest, in all its riotous variety, abruptly gives way to giant rectangles, laid out with geometrical precision and studded with thousands of palms.

Riswan Zen, a spatial analyst for Yel, last flew over in 2007. “So much forest gone, and all in two years, my God,” he says, gesticulating at a satellite imaging map. “If nothing is done, there’ll be no forest left in one to two years.”

Tripa, designated a priority conservation site by the UN, could hold 1,500 orang-utans if the forest was allowed to regenerate. Prospects seem slim, although Indonesia – one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, thanks to deforestation – claims to be committed both to saving the orang-utan and combating climate change.

Fewer than a quarter of Indonesian producers have joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a global organisation promoting sustainable practices. (Astra Agro is not among them.) Even in Aceh, where Governor Irwandi Yusuf, a former rebel leader, has proclaimed a “Green Vision”, authorities seem unwilling to crack down on the powerful oil palm companies.

So far, Jardines, whose colourful history inspired a series of novels by James Clavell, has resisted pressure to rein in its Indonesian subsidiary. In a statement to The Independent, Jardines – whose interests include the Mandarin Oriental hotels and Asian branches of Starbucks and IKEA – said Astra Agro’s plantations “function in full compliance with … environmental impact studies”.

Astra Agro says it plans to develop only half of its 13,000 hectares in Tripa because of conservation concerns, and it denies any illegal activity.

Ian Singleton, a Briton who heads PanEco’s Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme, has no doubt that oil palm is the biggest threat to the orang-utan: “I see the orang-utan as a test case. Are we serious about trying to conserve the planet’s eco-systems? If we are, let’s prove it by saving a species like the orang-utan. We know where the orang-utans are; all we have to do is protect the forests. If we’re serious about conservation, this is where we start.”

At a glance: Jardine Matheson

*Founded by two Scottish traders in Canton, China in 1832, it was the first British trading company to smash the East India Company’s Asian monopoly.

*Founder William Jardine was known as “the iron-headed old rat” for his toughness and asperity.

*The company’s fortunes were founded on smuggling huge quantities of opium into China, creating millions of addicts.

*When the Chinese fought back, Jardine persuaded the British government to launch the First Opium War against China.

*Astra Agro, a subsidiary of the company, claims that “concern for the environment” is “an integral part of all the company’s activities”.

Tags: oil palm, sumatran orangutan, Tripa

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Category: Oil Palm Plantations, Sumatran Orangutans, Uncategorized | Date: Mar 27 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

At the beginning of the 1990’s the Tripa Swamp Forests, on the west coat of Aceh (island of Sumatra) had approximately 1,500 Sumatran orangutans. Sumatran orangutans are listed as critically endangered. Today, the remaining Tripa Swamps that are being converted to oil palm plantations contain only an estimated 250 orangutans. It is crucial for the future of the Sumatran orangutan species to save this population’s precious habitat.

Adult Male Sumatran Orangutan.

Please take some time to watch this video Destruction of the Tripa Peat Swamp Forest (Aceh) made by PanEco. It was filmed in the Tripa region of Aceh Sumatra. It features local people voicing their concern about the impact of the palm oil business on their daily lives.

Ian Singleton, Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s (SOCP) Director of Conservation, blogged about the situation in Tripa in November. Read his post Save The Tripa Swamps to find out more.

Thank you.

Tags: oil palm, sumatran orangutan, Tripa

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Category: Oil Palm Plantations | Date: Feb 14 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

The article below appeared in the National section of the Jakarta Post on Friday 13th February and it causes great reason for concern.

Govt to allow peatland plantations

Adianto P. Simamora , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Fri, 02/13/2009 10:02 AM | National

The Agriculture Ministry will issue a decree to allow businesses to dig up the country’s millions of hectares of peatland for oil palm plantations.

Gatot Irianto, the ministry’s head of research and development, said his office was currently drafting a ministerial decree that would explain in detail the mechanism to turn the peatland areas into oil palm plantations, a move that many say will further damage the country’s environment.

“We still need land for oil palm plantations. We must be honest: the sector has been the main driver for the people’s economy,” he said Thursday on the sidelines of a discussion about adaptation in agriculture, organized by the National Commission on Climate Change.

The draft decree is expected to go into force this year.

“We’ve discussed the draft with stakeholders, including hard-line activists, to convince them that converting peatland is safe,” he said.

“We promise to promote eco-friendly management to ward off complaints from overseas buyers and international communities.”

Indonesia is currently the world’s largest crude palm oil (CPO) producer, and is expected to produce about 19.5 million tons this year.

Overseas buyers, however, have complained about Indonesia’s CPO products, saying they are produced at the expense of the environment.

Activists point to the massive expansions of plantations, including in peatlands, for the deaths of large numbers of orangutans in Kalimantan and Sumatra and for releasing huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Indonesia has about 20 million hectares of dense, black tropical peat swamps — formed when vegetation rots — that are natural carbon storage sinks.

A hectare of peatland can store between 3,400 and 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), but emits a much larger amount when burned.

Asked about the contribution to global warming, Gatot said trees planted in peatlands would absorb greenhouse gas emissions.

“The peatland will produce emissions only in the opening of the land, but this will be reabsorbed after new trees are planted,” he said.

However, a World Bank report from 2007 showed Indonesia was the world’s third biggest carbon emitter after the US and China, thanks mainly to the burning of peatlands.

A Wetlands International report from 2006 said Indonesia’s peatlands emitted around 2 billion tons of CO2 a year, far higher than the country’s emissions from energy, agriculture and waste, which together amount to only 451 million tons.

The country would have ranked 20th in the global carbon emitter list if emissions from peatlands were not counted.

The ministerial decree is being drafted at a time when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is still preparing a decree on peatland management in an effort to help combat global warming.

The draft of the presidential decree, drawn up in 2007, calls for tightened supervision on the use of peatlands across the country.

Tags: Indonesia, oil palm, Orangutans, peat forests

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Category: Oil Palm Plantations, Orangutans | Date: Jan 22 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

The cost of the biofuel boom on Indonesia’s forests.

The clearing of Indonesia’s rainforest for palm oil plantations is having profound effects – threatening endangered species, upending the lives of indigenous people, and releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide, writes Tom Knudson from Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network.

This interesting and informative article appeared in the guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 January 2009. Here is an extract from the article featuring Stephen.

“This isn’t mowing your lawn or putting up a factory on the outskirts of town,” said Stephen Brend, a zoologist and field conservationist with the London-based Orangutan Foundation. “It’s changing everything as far as the eye can see.”

Like tigers, orangutans — which are found only in Sumatra and Borneo — are also being nudged into increasingly isolated population units by rain forest destruction. Their numbers are dropping, too. But because there are more of them — between 45,000 and 69,000 in Borneo and 7,300 in Sumatra — extinction is not an imminent threat.

“They are still going to be in the wild, but in fragmented populations that can never meet,” Brend told me one evening. “And if it’s reduced to that, we’ve just lost everything. It’s not only the orangutans. It’s what you lose alongside them — the birds, insects, pollinators, all the environmental services that forests give, as well as a thing of beauty.”

Indonesia has long been known for its heavy-handed logging and plantation clearing. Rain forests fall faster in Indonesia, in fact, than almost anywhere else on earth. But Riaz Saehu, a spokesman for the Indonesia Embassy in Washington, D.C., told me that under the country’s new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took power in October 2004, the era of widespread clearing for oil palm may be coming to a close.

“There is an effort to reduce plantation expansion,” Saehu said. “What we do now is basically to promote sustainability.”

Many scientists are skeptical. “After 23 years there, I must say they can talk the talk but never walk the walk,” Lisa Curran, director of Yale University’s Tropical Resources Institute, told me in an e-mail. “The richest folks in Indonesia are owners of these oil palm plantations, so the corruption and patronage are linked to the very top of the food chain and power structures.”

In 2006, Curran was awarded a so-called MacArthur genius award for her work on deforestation in Indonesia. “Oil palm is a disaster all the way around for biodiversity if converted from logged forest or peat swamp,” she said. “Oil palm is fine if they actually put it on totally degraded lands – but they don’t.”
Read the full article

Tags: forests, Indonesia, oil palm, Orangutans

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Category: Belantikan Conservation Programme, Local Communities, Logging, Oil Palm Plantations, Uncategorized, Yayorin | Date: Jan 12 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

During our time in Belantikan we were also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have some long conversations with some of the older villagers about their way of life. We visited the ladang of Pak Taryom outside the village of Nanga Matu, to see the new crops he is cultivating with Yayorin’s help and find out how their new methods are bringing benefits to the area.

Pak Taryom in his ladang near Nanga Matu, cultivation here has been much changed with Yayorin’s help

Pak Taryom also explained to us about the traditions and ceremonies of the Dayak people. His brother, Pak Maju, is the last man of Nanga Matu refusing to convert to one of the five state approved faiths of Indonesia and still clinging to Kaharingan – the traditional Dayak religion. He is also the father of Yayorin’s cook Ani, the youngest of his seven daughters.

Pak Maju lives outside Nanga Matu and, on our last day in Belantikan, we went to visit him at his ladang tucked away inside the forest. He’s 58 years old and still working in the fields. We found him sat under a tarpaulin sheet in the centre of his ladang, a thin line of smoke twisting to the sky from the fire he was sitting by chewing tobacco rolled in leaves, a rifle and a long knife by his side. I got a little perturbed at one stage during our conversation when he turned to me and mimed pulling off my head and drew his knife. Although it turned out, via translation, that he was just explaining that when a Dayak is angry they can pull off an enemy’s head with their bare hands without recourse to a blade.

Pak Maju - Nanga Matu’s last adherent of the Kaharingan religion in his ladang

Pak Maju also told us how the villagers of Nanga Matu and Bintang Mengalih still come to see him and ask him to summon the spirits to grant their wishes. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that he could accept the end of the Kaharingan culture, religion being in his mind a matter of personal choice. He could not, however, accept the destruction of the forest. When we asked him what he thought of it he told us that the balance of life has been upset and ‘when the trees and the hills are all gone [to logging and mining] the people will all die.’. The world around Pak Maju is changing so fast that his fears for the forest, and everything that lives within it, could be realised within his lifetime.

We left Belantikan full of great memories. The work of the Orangutan Foundation, Yayorin and the local communities to protect this area for the benefit of people, orangutans and the forest continues.

Thank you,

David

Tags: communities, forests, orangutan conservation

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Category: Belantikan Conservation Programme, Local Communities, Logging, Oil Palm Plantations, Yayorin | Date: Jan 06 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

Its 6:30 on the 3rd December and we’re on our morning commute to work. Our boat is cutting its way through the rapids of the river and we’re on the look out for crocodiles lurking on the banks.

Morning commute - the rapid at Nanga Matu the starting point for the morning commute to work!

On the river - mist over the Belantikan river on the early morning journey to work.

On this early morning a mist still hangs over the top of the forest-covered hills on either side of the river. All around us the forest still thrives, providing sufficient sustenance for both the huge range of wildlife and the small village communities that have made this beautiful corner of Kalimantan their home. We are on the way to teach in one of these villages, Kahingai, and it’s the most incredible commute to work I could ever imagine, but sad too to think what this might be like in five years time if the fate of the forest here follows much of the rest of Kalimantan.

Our journey up to Belantikan from Pangkalan Bun, one month ago, showed us what the future might hold for the forest here. Passing us on the road heading back to town were the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, all stacked up two by two on the trucks that filed past in a long procession. Further piles of enormous dead trunks, neatly stripped of all unnecessary leaves and branches, lay by the side of the road awaiting transportation.

Logging concession - destruction of the forest on the road to Belantikan

Rampant logging was only part of the problem; most of the journey out was through oil palm plantations, with the neat ranks of oil palm advancing into the former territory of the wild forest. The new plantation is a parody of the original forest, providing no home to the orangutan or other animals, and when the planters have finished they leave a land degraded that can never become forest again. If Borneo was once a Garden of Eden then what has been done to the trees here makes stealing a bit of fruit look very innocent indeed.

Oil Palm Plantations on the way to Belantikan (Photo: Orangutan Foundation)

We were fortunate enough on our journey up to Belantikan to have an unscheduled overnight stop off in a richer part of the jungle when our van, swerving to avoid a fallen tree, got stuck in the mud.

Our accomodation for a night in the jungle, a van stuck in a ditch.

The accommodation, on the back seat of a van sunken on one side into a deep muddy ditch, wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was amazing to wake up with the dawn to a chorus of gibbons in the trees overhead. We were also lucky enough to see a deer flash across our path to disappear into the trees on the other side of the road. We were still in the territory of the logging concession that envelops Belantikan, but in a relatively untouched part of the forest. A well-policed logging concession can actually be considered the lesser of three evils, and there are fears of what might happen to Belantikan when the concession expires in 2012 if the twin terrors of illegal logging and palm oil move in en masse. It raises the question, what will be left when the children we are teaching today have grown up?

Tags: Borneo, conservation, deforestation, forests

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Category: Belantikan Conservation Programme, Local Communities, Logging, Oil Palm Plantations, Volunteer Programme, Yayorin | Date: Jan 05 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

The Belantikan Hulu ecosystem in Central Kalimantan is a priority conservation area for Orangutan Foundation and their partner Yayorin. The still surviving dense forest there is home to an incredible diversity of species, including the largest population of wild orangutans outside of a protected area. Belantikan Conservation Programme focuses on both researching and cataloguing the wildlife of the area and working with the local communities to develop ways to maintain their traditional lifestyles without having a detrimental impact on the forest ecosystem. As part of Yayorin’s capacity building educational programme Catherine Burns and myself, former Orangutan Foundation volunteers, travelled to Belantikan to work with Yayorin as English teachers in the schools of the villages of Nanga Matu, Kahingai and Bintang Mengalih.

Orangutan Foundation invited me to blog about our time there and the ongoing struggle to save this precious part of the Borneo forest. You can read my account of our experience over the next week.

Thanks,

David Hagan

Tags: Borneo, conservation, forests

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Category: Oil Palm Plantations, Orangutans, Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP), Yayorin | Date: Nov 14 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

After my last my about the day at Camp Leakey I received a short email from the Office reminding me that I was supposed to be writing about Orangutan Awareness Week! Whoops.

Sally and the Yayorin team will be able to tell you of all the activities. I thought I would offer a simple, personnel view on why I have always supported the week.

We all need trees.

We know how to save orangutans – you just stop chopping down the forest and hunting them. Leave them alone and they will be just fine. But that isn’t happening. The situation here in Borneo and in Sumatra is very bad. Just yesterday, we were told of a proposal to convert another 10,000ha (100km2) into an oil-palm plantation. Not all of that land is forest, but a lot of it is and I guarantee there are still orangutans, monkeys, hornbills and a host of other birds and smaller mammals living there.

Spot the difference.

What lay behind the local government’s decision to give up more forest? There are a host of reasons but perhaps the ultimate explanation is simply that the return from logging and palm oil translates to cash whereas the returns from standing forest are often intangible. That is a balance that has to be rectified. Which is exactly why Orangutan Awareness Week is so important:

- The loss of orangutans and their habitat is irreversible.

- Consumers need to be aware of the true cost of the products they buy. The driving force behind the move towards sustainable palm oil is consumer pressure.

- National governments need to be aware of the impact of the trade decisions they make. The US is to be applauded for its recent amendment to the Lacy Act which will go a long way to stopping the import of illegally felled timber.

- Here, the local Government needs to be aware that floods which plague the riverside communities are linked to deforestation upstream.

- Farmers need to know that there are alternatives to slash and burn agriculture, that their household income can improve by better use of the land.

- There are huge ethical issues involved in the loss of orangutans as a species let alone the abhorrent killing of individuals. I feel this keenly and am sure many of you do too. However, climate change has now made the loss of their habitat an ethical issue too: tropical forests can play a significant role in mitigating against climate change. Truly, saving orangutans can now help humankind.

Without Orangutan Awareness Week how many people will know of the link between this smoke from forests and the rise in sea level? Without the work of groups like Yayorin how many people will learn it doesn’t have to be this way?

We all have to be involved in this and that’s why Orangutan Awareness Week is international. The bottom line is whether to destroy forests or to save them will remain a choice that many people will have a hand in making. Only with complete awareness will we all make the best choice and orangutans are the perfect flagship or ambassadors for the forest.

What we all need - forests “lungs of the planet”

There are half-a-dozen or so places, Tanjung Puting National Park and the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve among them, that are safer today than they probably have been at any time for the past thirty odd years. Saving them has been a battle and we are now working on securing the peace. We can be proud of those successes but they are not enough. Certainly, we can not be drawn into trading off a few parcels of safe forest for devastation elsewhere. As the 10,000ha mentioned above shows, the battle lines are still being drawn. That has to stop.

The battle lines

I was touched to see the blog by Art for Gorillas on the Wildlife Direct. ). If children in Rwanda can be galvanised to care for orangutans what can’t be done?

As always, thank you for your support,

Stephen

Tags: forests, orangutan, palm oil

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