Nature Alert: SHAME SHAME, SHAME, ON THE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT

Monday 8 June 2009

SHAME SHAME, SHAME, ON THE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT

STOP PRESS 30th June 2009

This is Hardi Baktiantoro, Founder of the Centre for Orangutan Protection comforting "Maeky" a one year old male orangutan who two months ago was orphaned by a palm oil company. In one forest, close to where Hardi and I are today some 200, yes 200 orangutans will be slaughtered this year by a PALM OIL COMPANY - one who is otherwise trying to receive approval for sustainably produced palm oil. More on this when I return.

Who is to blame? The government of Indonesia, without a doubt.

Do you hear WWF etc complaining? Only Nature Alert and COP do this kind of 'dirty work', at no small risk to ourselves, but it has to be done. What is happening to orangutans is nothing less than genocide.

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.