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

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.