Nature Alert: Letters: Helping long suffering orangutans

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Letters: Helping long suffering orangutans

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/21/letters-helping-long-suffering-orangutans.html

Tue, 04/21/2009 2:26 PM | Opinion / The Jakarta Post

The governor of Jakarta is to be congratulated on his vision for a slimmed-down and modernized Ragunan Zoo - one Indonesia will hopefully become proud of.

It also is very encouraging to learn that the governor is supportive of providing greatly enhanced living conditions for the orangutans they choose to keep. They are after all Indonesia's most iconic species as well as its only great ape. Let us all hope the zoo will make every effort to move surplus wild-caught orangutans to rehabilitation centres. Surely Indonesia will not want to ship their orangutans to far-off countries and zoos, simply because it believes itself incapable of taking care of them.

How will this look to the rest of the world, especially at a time when millions of dollars are being spent on new cages to house gorillas at the zoo? Why this zoo thinks it "needs" more gorillas is a question no one has thus far answered and it remains a mystery.

We live in hope that the newly appointed director will review this situation and instead use the newly built enclosures for orangutans that are currently housed in horrific conditions. We wish the governor every success and offer him our full support in providing these long-suffering orangutans with a much better future.

Sean Whyte
Jakarta

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.