INDONESIA: Palm oil plantations threaten the endangered orangutans in Borneo

Growing demand for palm oil as a green fuel and a foodstuff is threatening the survival of Indonesia's orangutan, the Center for Orangutan protection (COP) said on Wednesday (July 25). Indonesia and Malaysia are racing to convert the forests into profitable palm crops, destroying the orangutan's natural habitat. As their forest home dwindles, orangutans are increasingly venturing into the palm oil plantations and eating young palm shoots. Plantation workers are not impressed. "(In one company plantation) there is a trend that the employees will be very proud if they succeed in catching orangutan," said Hardi Baktiantoro, Director of the Center for Orangutan Protection at a news conference to highlight the orangutan's plight. "I don't know whether they get a reward from the company or not but the workers will certainly be proud if they can catch the beast," he added. Bound hand and foot, dishevelled orangutans caught raiding Borneo's oil palm crops silently await their fate as a small crowd of plantation workers gather to watch. For plantation workers and owners, the apes are pests and a risk to their livelihood. The COP said they have found apes that have had their hands chopped off, others have been slashed to death with machetes and others shot in the head on trespassed plantations. The organisation said there was no enforcement of laws protecting the apes and corruption was often to blame for failing to bring the firms responsible to task. "We have a lot of evidence of at least 600 orangutan being tortured," said Baktiantoro. "They live in a quarantine facility in Nyaru Menteng. There is no law enforcement happening. No one goes to jail, no one is sued, everyone is free." Indonesia and Malaysia together produce 83 percent of the world's palm oil. Made by crushing fresh fruit, the reddish-brown oil is riding high in the commodities charts, with crude prices up over 15 percent this year after rising 40 percent in 2006. Used in cookies, toothpaste, ice cream and breads it is the world's second most popular edible oil after soy. Demand is also soaring for palm oil-derived bio-fuel, despite objections from critics who slam the "green" alternative to crude oil as "deforestation diesel" because of the destruction wreaked on forests to make way for palm plantations. Of 6.5 million hectares cultivated in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2004, almost four million hectares was previously forest, environment group Friends of the Earth calculated. Fewer than 30,000 orangutan are thought to be left in the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia and environmentalists say the species could become extinct in 20 years if the current rate of decline continues. Thousands have strayed into the path of international commerce as Indonesia and Malaysia, their last remaining habitats, race to convert their forests to profitable palm crops. Branded pests for venturing out from their diminishing forest habitats into plantations where they eat young palm shoots. Indonesia --home to most of the world's orangutans and many other endangered species-- and Malaysia together produce 83 percent of the world's palm oil. For orangutan, the clearances are a matter of life and death.

ITN Source | July 28, 2007

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