Unified force sought to save orangutans

Unified force sought to save orangutans

Sebastien Blanc, Agence France-Presse, Pontianak

Leading environmental and wildlife agencies called on Friday for a united effort to protect the habitat of Borneo's orangutans whose survival is threatened by mass deforestation.

Aggressive destruction of jungles has caused a breathtaking decline in orangutan numbers and action is urgently needed to lift the threat of their imminent extinction, non-governmental organizations and Indonesian officials said.

"We would like to develop an action plan bringing together all stakeholders," said Jito Sugardjito, representing Fauna and Flora International (FFI) at a meeting in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak.

Asia's only great ape, the orangutan, which translated from the local Malay language means "person of the forest", could be wiped out within 12 years, environmentalists have warned.

The red-haired apes, close kin to humans, are found only on the island of Borneo, which is shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. On Borneo, the number of orangutans is estimated to have dropped from 200,000 to 50,000 in the past decade.

"Large-scale and coordinated actions are needed so that the limited resources available for securing Bornean orangutan can be used efficiently and effectively," said Indonesian government conservation official Adi Susmianto.

Friends of the Earth warned in a report last month that wildlife centers in Indonesia were overrun with orphaned baby orangutans that had been rescued from forests cleared to make way for new palm oil plantations.

Malaysia's palm oil industry denied the accusations on Thursday, saying palm oil was a strategic, well-planned agricultural industry which supported the preservation of wildlife including orangutans.

Beyond forest clearing, orangutans also are threatened by commercial logging, forest fires and hunting and poaching for the bush meat and pet trades.

Representatives from FFI, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the UN's Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) and UNESCO gathered on Wednesday in Pontianak to try and pool their expertise to save the orangutan.

"FFI are very good on law enforcement. WWF is very weak on that. Both are very good on rehabilitation," said WWF Indonesian director Nazir Foead. "Our strength is in habitat management and corporate engagement."

"We need to work a lot with corruption-watch NGOs" to keep a tab on the palm oil industry, Foead said.

Indonesia's environmental groups say they are powerless to stop timber barons who bribe senior officials so they can plunder tropical forests. Even national parks in Kalimantan, the Indonesian area of Borneo island, are losing forests invaluable to the orangutan.

Deforestation in Indonesia has accelerated since the industry was decentralized in 2000, putting the decision-making power over logging in the hands of easily manipulated local officials, the groups say.

"We want the government to be more transparent and make a commitment" to stop the rapid deforestation, said Darmawan Liswanto from Yayasan Titian, an Indonesian environmental charity.

Sugardjito, the FFI representative, agreed. "At the moment it is very uncontrolled. Nobody is responsible for logging."

Despite promises of increased cooperation, some fear real progress will not be achieved without greater effort from the Indonesian government, currently struggling with an oil price crisis as well as the threat of bird flu.