Five years to save the orang utan

[Al-khiyal]

The Orang Utan, one of man's closest and most enigmatic cousins, could be virtually extinct within five years after it was discovered that the animal's rainforest habitat is being destroyed even more rapidly than had been predicted.

A United Nations report has found that illegal logging and fires have been overtaken as the primary cause of deforestation by a huge expansion of oil palm plantations, which are racing to meet soaring demand from Western food manufacturers and the European Union's zeal for biofuels.

Palm oil is seen by critics as a cautionary tale about good intentions. As a vegetable oil it can enhance a healthy diet, and as a biofuel it can reduce carbon emissions which contribute to climate change. Yet it transpires that humans' pursuit of an ethical lifestyle could inadvertently mean a death sentence for one of the great apes.

The paradox was brought to world attention by Friends of the Earth, whose ongoing campaign for producers, manufacturers and retailers to commit to sustainable palm oil was recognised at last week's Observer Food Monthly awards with the honour for best ethical contribution to the industry.

The UN's environment programme report, 'The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of Emergency', says natural rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being cleared so rapidly that up to 98 per cent may be destroyed by 2022, and the lowland forest strongholds of orang utans much sooner, unless urgent action is taken. This is a full decade earlier than the previous report estimated when it was published five years ago. Overall the loss of orang utan habitat is happening 30 per cent more rapidly than had previously been thought.

Responding to the findings, the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, a charity which works to rescue, rehabilitate and release the animals into protected forest, warned that at the current rate of deforestation by the palm oil industry, orang utans in the wild could be close to extinction by 2012.

Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster and naturalist, told The Observer: 'Every bit of the rainforest that is knocked down is less space for orangs. They have been reduced very seriously in the past decade. Western governments and companies need to be proactive.'

Satellite images reveal that illegal logging is now taking place in 37 out of 41 national parks in Indonesia and is probably still on the increase. The report says: 'At current rates of intrusions, it is likely that some parks may become severely degraded in as little as three to five years, that is by 2012.'

The UN also highlights the growing threat posed by palm oil harvesting, noting that large areas of Indonesian and Malaysian forest have been cleared to make way for plantations. As consumer awareness about healthy eating and ethical shopping grows, palm oil is an increasingly popular alternative to trans fatty acids - more closely associated with heart disease - and is found in one in 10 supermarket products including margarine, baked goods and sweets, as well as detergents and lipsticks.

There has been much soul searching among environmentalists because palm oil is also in demand for biofuels, seen as one of the best ways of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and so combating global warming. Palm oil is currently considered the most productive source of biodiesel fuel, and Indonesia and Malaysia account for 83 per cent of its global production.

Since 2003 the European Union has been among the chief culprits. Its biofuels progress report earlier this year specified Indonesia among the list of countries for cheap biofuel production, prompting Greenpeace to warn: 'Booming EU demand for biofuels could kill Indonesian forests.' Britain imports one million tonnes every year, double what it did in 1995.

But the new UN report warns: 'Today, the rapid increase in [oil palm] plantation acreage is one of the greatest threats to orang utans and the forests on which they depend. In Malaysia and Indonesia, it is now the primary cause of permanent rainforest loss. The huge demand for this versatile product makes it very difficult to curb the spread of plantations.'

Displaced from their rainforest habitat, the orang utans struggle to survive in the oil palm plantations and are regarded as an agricultural pest. Mindful of the potential loss in profits, farmers have carried out a vicious extermination programme.

Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, said: 'They are left hungry so they go in search of food in the plantations and destroy the plants. They become easy targets. Some plantation owners put a bounty of $10 or $20 on the head of orangutans, which is worth a few weeks' salary for the workers.

'Workers don't usually have guns: the orang utans that get shot are the lucky ones. We've seen them beaten to death with wood sticks or iron bars, doused in petrol and set on fire, trussed up in nets or tied up with wire which cuts through their flesh. Often a mother is killed and eaten while its baby is sold on or kept as a pet. In the local plantations where we're working, the managers have now agreed not to offer the bonus. But there's still a macho thing about bringing down an adult male.'

The foundation's struggle to save the animals will be shown in the series Orang Utan Diary starting on BBC2 on 2 April. Desilets said that the palm oil industry was now a severe threat to orang utans' very existence. 'The plantations are huge, the size of a county in England: you can drive for two hours and you're still in one. In the UK, when a product says "vegetable oil" it might mean palm oil, so you're not aware that you might be party to this killing. We put the functional survival of orang utans in the wild at no more than five years. There will always be some remote pockets but the population will be too small to reproduce and in one or two generations it will die out. When the last orang utan dies I will give up all hope in humanity. But for the time being we still have hope.'

Campaigners will move up a gear this week. Hardi Baktiantoro, director of Indonesia's Centre for Orang Utan Protection, has flown to Britain to work with the group Nature Alert to push for greater accountability. He said: 'With my own hands I have rescued countless baby orang utans orphaned by palm oil companies. With my eyes I have witnessed these same companies extinguish all natural life where pristine rainforests once stood. The situation is so desperate in Indonesia that I have come to Great Britain to ask for help with introducing Orang Utan Friendly palm oil into food and other household products.'

After a year of hard campaigning, including demonstrations outside stores, Friends of the Earth persuaded Tesco and other supermarkets to work with producers and manufacturers on a scheme for certifying sustainable palm oil which should include labelling products so consumers can be sure they are not buying from a source which harms orang utans.

Supermarkets said they were trying to tackle the issue although they have been criticised for moving too slowly. A spokesman for Tesco said: 'We are deeply concerned about the loss of rainforest - and the orang utans it supports - and believe that we can make a real contribution to work on this important area. It is a complex problem.'

Sean Sutcliffe, chief executive of the Biofuels Corporation, the biggest biofuels company in the UK, said: 'The existing deforestation is driven by demand from food and cosmetics. Palm oil should be part of the solution: the key is to make sure that standards are put in place.'

People of the forest

· Their name is derived from the Malay words 'orang hutan', which literally mean 'person of the forest'.

· The orang utan is one of man's closest relatives in the animal kingdom, sharing 96.4 per cent of our DNA.

· Orang utans are the biggest tree-dwelling animals in the world. Adult males stand four and a half feet tall and weigh 130 to 200 pounds.

· The wild population is thought to be 40-50,000, half the number that existed 20 years ago.

·They spend most of their time alone once they reach maturity.

Five years to save the orang utan

[Bent_Bladi]

how sad... . How can people be so heartless... All that cruelty just for 20 bucks?!

They're my favorite kind of apes... People!! Start buying recycled paper!!

[Cheba_Mami]

What WWF is doing

WWF has been involved in orang-utan conservation since 1962. Research has played a vital part in the work carried out over the past three decades, with surveys being conducted in many parts of Indonesia and Malaysia. Data collected has been used to show where there is a particular threat to orang-utans and their habitat.

As a result of this continuing work, WWF has been able to help governments and other conservation organisations in creating and extending protected areas and wildlife sanctuaries where hunting and logging are banned.

WWF has also helped governments to enforce restrictions on the trade in live animals and orang-utan products. When live orang-utans are rescued from traders, they are often taken to refuges where they can recover and be rehabilitated, and eventually be released back into the wild. Wherever WWF works in the field, great importance is placed upon the extensive knowledge and expertise possessed by local people and communities.

With your support, WWF will continue its work to protect the orang-utan and its essential forest habitat.

Further Information
To find out more in-depth information about WWF's work visit the orang-utan section of our research centre or read our Saving the Heart of Borneo feature

What you can do
WWF depends upon public support morally and financially to carry out urgent conservation projects to save the orang-utan and other species and habitats facing extinction. Please help us to continue our vital work by:

Taking part in our Walk for Wildlife

buying goods from our gift catalogue or online shop
ARKive
For more information, images and video footage on orang-utans visit the Sumatran orang-utan or Bornean orang-utan sections of Welcome to ARKive - Images of life on Earth

WWF-UK: Orang-utans

[Al-khiyal]

The numbers are damning. Within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone, little more than a footnote in history. With them will disappear some of the world's most important wildlife species, victims of the rapacious destruction of their habitat in what conservationists see as a lost cause.

Yet this gloomy script was supposed to have included a small but significant glimmer of hope. Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to boost palm oil production.

More startling is that conservationists believe the move to clear land for this "green fuel" is often little more than a conspiracy, providing cover to strip out the last stands of timber not already lost to illegal loggers. In one corner of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, a mere 250,000 hectares or 1,000 sq miles...-... almost twice the size of Greater London...-...of the 6m hectares of forest allocated for palm oil by the government have actually been planted.

"When you look closely the areas where companies are getting permission for oil palm plantations are those of high-conservation forest," said Willie Smits, who set up SarVision, a satellite mapping service that charts the rainforest's decline. "What they're really doing is stealing the timber because they get to clear it before they plant. But the timber's all they want; hit and run with no intention of ever planting. It's a conspiracy."

The fear is that Indonesia's aim of almost doubling the 6.5m hectares under oil palm plantation in the next five to eight years - tripling it by 2020 - to meet rocketing worldwide demand will afford ever-greater opportunities for the timber thieves. An estimated 2.8m hectares of forest is already lost every year.

Until now palm oil - of which 83% is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia - was produced for food. But the European Union's aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, partly by demanding that 10% of vehicles be fuelled by biofuels, will see a fresh surge in palm oil demand that could doom the rainforests.

That is likely to kill off the "flagship species" of wildlife such as the Asian elephant, the Sumatran tiger and the orang-utan of Borneo which are already under enormous pressure from habitat loss. Plantation owners regard the orang-utan as pests because it eats the young palm oil plants and hunt them down ruthlessly.

"In reality it's over for the tiger, the elephant and the orang-utan," said Mr Smits, who founded the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation. "Their entire lowland forest habitat is essentially gone already. We find orang-utan burned, or their heads cut off. Hunters are paid 150,000 rupiah [£8.30] for the right hand of an orang-utan to prove they've killed them."

Two orang-utan rehabilitation centres run by the foundation on Indonesian Borneo are overflowing with more than 800 of the primates, most rescued from oil palm plantations. But the east Kalimantan centre, where rescued babies are reared by hand, has been unable to release any rescued orang-utan into the wild for four years because suitable habitat has proved impossible to find. In central Kalimantan the picture is worse: it has never staged a release in almost a decade.

A new UN report The Last Stand of the Orangutan: State of Emergency found that forests in Indonesia and Malaysia are being felled so quickly that 98% could be gone by 2022. Yet the orang-utan's lowland forest could disappear much sooner.

"We're looking at the virtual extinction of the orang-utan in 15 years, or less," said Raffaella Commitante, primatologist at the foundation's east Kalimantan centre. "There are between 50,000 and 60,000 on Borneo and 7,000 on Sumatra. But 5,000 -10,000 are killed each year."

Yet palm oil, mixed with diesel to produce biofuel, was hailed as a potential saviour for the environment. Put simply, the argument runs that the palm oil plants produce organic compounds that when burned in engines do not add to overall carbon dioxide levels. The CO2 absorbed by the plant in its life-cycle should balance the amount it gives out when burned.

However, the more the ecological fairytale is scrutinised the more it begins to look like a bad dream. Researchers from the Dutch pressure group Wetlands International found that as much as half the space created for new palm oil plantations was cleared by draining and burning peat-land, sending huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The sodden peat of central Kalimantan acts as a vast organic sponge that stores huge amounts of carbon. But as it dries while being drained for plantation, or by roads being cut through to remove timber, it releases the stored carbon. In Indonesia alone, the peat releases 600m tonnes of carbon a year. Worse, it is often set alight to speed clearing, adding to the CO2 from the huge forest fires that blanket much of south-east Asia in haze. Estimates say Indonesia's fires generate 1,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, pushing it to the world's third-largest producer of CO2 from 26th, if both factors are considered.

Conservationists also fear that placing all eggs in one basket could prompt an ecological disaster. A palm oil monoculture would be unable to support the rich diversity of wildlife and leave the environment vulnerable to catastrophic disease, while local people dependent on the crop could be left high and dry if it fell out of favour.

"There are bad biofuels in the world and palm oil is often the very 'baddest'," said Ed Matthew, biofuel specialist at Friends of the Earth. "Europe shouldn't be setting targets until it's put a mechanism in place to block bad biofuels. Palm oil is one of the cheapest biofuels in the field, but by setting targets it sends the wrong signal for businessmen."

As the risks become more obvious there has been a growing clamour for eco-labelling of "sustainable" palm oil. A "round table" of buyers, producers and environmentalists has established several key criteria that would prevent conversion of high-conservation rainforest to palm oil plantations, cut the use of fires to clear land, and mitigate the conflict of plantations with wildlife and rural communities, though it has yet to be ratified. "It's vital we find financial backing for this now," said Fitrian Ardiansyah, a Worldwide Fund for Nature-Indonesia programme officer.

Jakarta is increasingly aware of the dangers, highlighted by its inability to prevent continuing illegal logging. But it is keen to grab the chance and is pledging to put in place regulations to seize allocated palm oil land not planted within a time limit.

Yet as a developing country it also believes Europe must help out financially if it wants the safeguards against the downside of palm oil production that will assist in cutting greenhouse gas.

"The Indonesian government simply doesn't have the capability or the capacity to do this alone without the support of the Europeans, the US, Japanese, or whoever," said Alhilal Hamdi, chief executive of Indonesia's biofuels development board. "It's no good other countries looking to us to help cut their CO2 emissions without helping to support us in that effort."

Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now

[Al-khiyal]

The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of Emergency

(.pdf file, 20mb)

[Al-khiyal]

New orangutan population found in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 12, 2009 (AP) — Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia — perhaps as many as 2,000 — giving a rare boost to one of the world's most endangered great apes.

A team surveying forests nestled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of Borneo island counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a "substantial" number of the animals, said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist at the U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy.

"We can't say for sure how many," he said, but even the most cautious estimate would indicate "several hundred at least, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 even."

The team also encountered an adult male, which angrily threw branches as they tried to take photos, and a mother and child.

There are an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 90 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in neighboring Malaysia.

The countries are the world's top producers of palm oil, used in food, cosmetics and to meet growing demands for "clean-burning" fuels in the U.S. and Europe. Rain forests, where the solitary animals spend almost all of their time, have been clear-cut and burned at alarming rates to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations.

The steep topography, poor soil and general inaccessibility of the rugged limestone mountains appear to have shielded the area from development, at least for now, said Meijaard. Its trees include those highly sought after for commercial timber.

Birute Mary Galdikas, a Canadian scientist who has spent nearly four decades studying orangutans in the wild, said most of the remaining populations are small and scattered, which make them especially vulnerable to extinction.

"So yes, finding a population that science did not know about is significant, especially one of this size," she said, noting that those found on the eastern part of the island represent a rare subspecies, the black Borneon orangutan, or Pongo pygmaeus morio.

The 700-square mile (2,500-square kilometer) jungle escaped the massive fires that devastated almost all of the surrounding forests in the late 1990s. The blazes were set by plantation owners and small-scale farmers and exacerbated by the El Nino droughts.

Nardiyono, who headed The Nature Conservancy's weeklong survey in December, said "it could be the density is very high because after the fires, the orangutans all flocked to one small area."

It was unusual to come face-to-face with even one of the elusive creatures in the wild and to encounter three was extraordinary, he said, adding that before this expedition, he had seen just five in as many years.

Conservationists say the most immediate next step will be working with local authorities to protect the area and others that fall outside of national parks. A previously undiscovered population of several hundred also was found recently on Sumatra island, home to around 7,000.

"That we are still finding new populations indicates that we still have a chance to save this animal," said Paul Hartman, who heads the U.S.-funded Orangutan Conservation Service Program, adding it's not all "gloom and doom."

Noviar Andayani, head of the Indonesian Primate Association and Orangutan Forum, said the new discoveries point to how much work still needs to be done to come up with accurate population assessments, considered vital to determining a species' vulnerability to extinction.

"There are many areas that still have not been surveyed," she said, adding that 18 private conservation groups have just started work on an in-depth census based on interviews with people who spend time in the forests.

They include villagers and those working on plantations or within logging concessions.

"We hope this will help fill in a few more gaps," said Andayani, adding that preliminary tests in areas where populations are known indicate that the new interview-based technique could provide a clearer picture than nest tallies.

"Right now the information and data we have about orangutans is still pretty rudimentary," she said.

Some experts say at the current rate of habitat destruction, the animals could be wiped out within the next two decades.