Orangutan Foundation

Category: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Lamdandau Vet, Oil Palm Plantations, Orangutan Care Centre & Quarantine, Orangutan Foundation Staff, Orangutans, Rehabilitation, Uncategorized | Date: Nov 09 2009 | By: orangutanfoundation

Last Sunday the Orangutan Foundation responded to reports of a young female orangutan isolated in a tree in an oil palm plantation.  

The young  female orangutan climbed the fig tree when we arrived in the oil palm plantation area at Pandu senjaya village, Pangkalan Lada.  

Uduk and Yatno  climbed the tree, but the orangutan moved to the top of the tree. At 17.30 the orangutan made the third nest and prepared to sleep. It started to get dark, so Uduk climbed down from the tree. We decided to stop the rescue and drove back to Pangkalan Bun. A labourer from the oil palm plantation stayed and watched the orangutan during the night.

The next day at 05.00 Dr Fiqri, the Vet of Orangutan Foundation’s Reintroduction Programme arrived and the orangutan was still in the tree. The labourer had started work that made the orangutan scared to come down. 

The plantation labourer moved to a different area and the orangutan began to climb down. Dr Fiqri tried to catch her but she was very fast and moved to another tree, climbing right to the top.

The second rescue team arrived at 08.00, started to moved in on the second tree where the orangutan was.

At 10.00 the orangutan climbed down and the rescue team succeeded to catch her with a net.

Dr Fiqri immediately checked the orangutan and he found worms in the orangutan’s faeces but on a whole the orangutan was in good condition. 

The young  female orangutan inside the transportation cage.

We then had to carefully transfer the cage to the truck.

 The young female orangutan on the back of the truck with Dr Fiqri always keeping a close eye on the whole translocation process for safe and good handling. 

The young  female orangutan’s view as she leaves the oil palm plantation. She will be freed in the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, a safer and healthier habitat, after she has received treatment for the worms in the Orangutan care Center and Quarantine (OCCQ) facility.

Dr Fiqri said approximately 3 or 4 days after treatment the female orangutan is ready to be translocated to the reserve where she will be monitored and protected. Please make a donation today to support our work in the Lamandau reserve - these orangutans deserve a life in the forest and the forests deserve orangutans.

Special thanks  go to; Eko Novi, the head of of Section II Nature Resources Conservation Agency of Central Kalimantan; Haryo, who gave the information about the young  female orangutan in the oil palm plantation; Sia and Polis (OCCQ  Staff) for good collaboration rescue ; Tigor (Orangutan Reintroduction Manager), Uduk (Orangutan Reintroduction Camp Coordinator), Fiqri (Orangutan Reintroduction Vet) and Yatno (Orangutan Reintroduction Driver) for the good work and dedication.

Thank you,

Hudi W Dewe

Orangutan Foundation - Programme Co-ordinator

Tags: Indonesia, oil palm, Orangutans, rescue, Wildlife Reserve

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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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