Nature Alert: Indonesia's orangutans

Friday 2 January 2009

Indonesia's orangutans

The Jakarta Post, 2nd January

Indonesia's orangutans

The International Primate Protection League (IPPL) agrees with Van Mengden's comments in regard to Ragunan Zoo and its Schmutzer Center gorillas (The Jakarta Post, Dec. 30, p. 7).This center cost a fortune to build and should best be used for the benefit of Indonesian animals and the education of Indonesia's children to cherish Indonesia's wildlife heritage.

Indonesia is blessed with extraordinary apes great and small -- the amazing orangutans and a variety of swinging gibbons and wonderful monkeys like the proboscis monkeys and the elegant leaf monkeys.

Why on earth does any Indonesian zoo want gorillas? Gorillas belong in Africa. No African zoo has orangutans. Four male gorillas are already at Ragunan, of whom one already died, and reportedly one or more female gorillas are likely to be sent from the UK to Ragunan soon. Apparently chimpanzees, also an African species, are present at Ragunan. Some rare Indonesian primates recently reached Howletts, species unknown to IPPL.

Van Mengden says any new exhibit space should be given to unreleasable orangutans -- most of whom are victims of human cruelty -- so they can live deserved better lives. Releasable orangutans should be rehabilitated and turned to safe areas of forest, assuming there are some left.

Save the red apes! Save their forest homes.

SHIRLEY MCGREAL
Chairwoman
International Primate Protection League
Summerville, U.S.

http://old.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20090102.F07&irec=6

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.