you
might like to try this; close your eyes for a few moments
and conjure up in your mind,
images of Borneo and its
pristine rainforests - the kind
you have probably seen on
television, in books, magazines etc.
What do you see?
Now look at the photos to your
right and see what was once
rainforests full of wildlife –some almost certainly still to
be discovered and named.
Cures for many human medical
conditions, including cancer,
may have been in these forests.
The loss to Indonesia,
its people, the world, is
incalculable.
Why is it happening? Largely
because oil palm companies
sometimes legally, sometimes
not, cut down the forests, tear
up the earth (mostly peat),
plant oil palm trees, pour
insecticides and fertiliser
into the ground and
sit back to reap large
profits from the palm oil
which often finds its way
into household products in
Great Britain, America,
Australia, etc. etc. Check out
http://www.born-to-be-wild.org/
link to the right of this page.
Some oil palm companies who
obtain
licences to cut down forests togrow oil palm trees, log the
forest (quick and highly profitable)
and they then disappear.
Having made a quick profit they leave the land
bear and disappear. Indonesia
has millions of hectares of such
land which oil palm companies
could now use, but they don’t –
because they want the
valuable ($$$$$) rainforest trees
as well as the land.
All the above photos were taken in the Central Kalimantan region in in June 2007.
-a.jpg)
