Nature Alert: You CAN make a difference. The question is: Will you?

Friday, 5 September 2008

You CAN make a difference. The question is: Will you?

Please take a moment to visit this new Blog by a conservationist in Australia. Married with three young children, if Amanda can make time to write this Blog as well as lobby many influential people, what might you able to do if you try?

http://orangaction.blogspot.com/

The situation for orangutans and rainforests in Indonesia is catastrophic. About 2500 - 3000 orangutans killed every year and seven million hectares of rainforest already destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations.

An area of forest equal to 71,000 football fields is destroyed EVERY day. How angry doe this make you? Please don't just get angry - that alone won't help orangutans. Why not begin to get even with those who make a living out of destroying rainforests and killing orangutans?

There are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those that wonder what happened.

Which are you?
Amanda is doing just that - and if she can do it, why not you?!
If you are reading this, thank you for caring. But, if all you do is read this and do nothing else, regrettably you become part of the problem - and not the solution. Maybe you could at least send emails to some of those people mentioned on both this Blog and the one by Amanda.

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.