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.