Thursday 23 April 2009

Orangutan Conservation: Easy Come, Easy Go

April 22, 2009 The Jakarta Globe

Your Letters: April 23

Orangutan Conservation: Easy Come, Easy Go

It is indeed good news that a new population of possibly as many as 2,000 orangutans (“Rare Orangutans Found in Kalimantan,” April 12) has been discovered at a time when the government is killing them off at the rate of 3,000 a year — a figure it has been able to maintain consistently for each of the last 25 years.

In the past 10 years alone, overseas donors have pumped tens of millions of dollars into Indonesia toward saving orangutans. Would anyone like to hazard a guess how much the Indonesian government has contributed?

And is it not time the main culprit, the Ministry of Forestry, was renamed the Ministry of Logging — legal or otherwise?

This ministry has the blood of thousands of orangutans on its hands.

Sean Whyte, chief executive Nature Alert, www.naturealert.org

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/article/17424.html