Nature Alert: Live and Let Die

Thursday 20 March 2008

Live and Let Die

Appeared in the Jakarta Post, 18th March 2008

LIVE AND LET DIE

Dear Sir,

In December 2007 a spokesperson for the Ministry of Forestry told the Jakarta Post that since the 1970’s about 3000 orangutans had been killed every year.

Government departments when dealing with issues like this are notoriously economical with the truth, so it’s fair to say their estimate is likely to be on the low side. That’s about 100,000 orangutans and countless millions of other animals and birds sacrificed in the name of progress, or to be more precise – to make a few people very, very rich.

This begs the question: just when will President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
exert some real authority and bring a stop to this carnage? With only about 60,000 orangutans left, there’s no more time left for talk or new reports to be filed away along with numerous others collecting dust on government shelves. Action is needed, and now.

A good start would be for the government itself to immediately stop selling licences to palm oil companies permitting them to cut down rainforests and in doing so, kill orangutans – a legally protected species. Mr President the world is watching you. Do you really want to be remembered as the President who could have taken action to stop orangutans, Indonesia’s most famous and revered species, from becoming extinct, but who chose not to?

Is it also not about time your government began to enforce the Kinshasha Declaration for Great Apes, an agreement you entered into in 2005 but have so far totally ignored?
If you cannot be trusted to implement that Agreement, why should anyone trust anything you said in Bali last December?

Yours sincerely.

Sean Whyte
Chief Executive
www.naturealert.org

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.