Monday 18 August 2008

Feeling the heat already, and it is going to get a lot hotter yet.

One large organisation who had up to now been rather less than helpful or forthcoming, within hours of my recent postings below they sent me more details about their organisation's activities. Perhaps the timing was just a coincidence, but then again, they would have known they were soon to be named.

Like almost all big organisations in this field of work, they have big plans to show what they will be doing in the future, and even bigger budgets, but little to show for what money has already been spent.

I'm never sure when such groups reply to me if they really believe what they are saying or, just hoping that a good PR letter full of wishful thinking and politically correct words might keep people like me satisfied. Sadly, this latest letter I'm referring to is big on PR and small on substance: It leaves me dissatisfied.

I mean, if you were based in Indonesia and had a couple of million dollars (about £1,000,000), even a million dollars to spend (this year alone) on orangutan conservation, wouldn't you expect to be saving a lot of orangutans and even rainforest's? Well, I can think of at least three organisations with these kind of budgets, but whose effectiveness I am questioning. Why? Because I don't see them saving orangutans or rainforest's, but I do see lots of expenditure I consider at this moment in time to be at least questionable - so this is what I am doing; questioning where all this money is being spent.

The sums of money mentioned above are large by any standard. In Indonesia, US$1,000,000 would go maybe seven to ten times further than in any non-Asian country. i.e the USA. Bearing this in mind, don't you wonder why it is the orangutan population continues to decline? How many big household name groups have you heard say they have saved this forest or these orangutans?

WWF likes to talk up their Heart of Borneo project, which may well do some good one day, but it is yet another 'big' fundraising project that will take years to evaluate, by which time a few million more pounds/dollars will have been spent. I mean, if WWF cannot Save the Tiger, what can they save? Do you want to trust them with orangutans and your money?