Nature Alert: Police Remove Officers in Central Kalimantan

Tuesday 29 September 2009

Police Remove Officers in Central Kalimantan

It's in East Kalimantan where The Nature Conservancy has its office and massive budget linked to USAid/OCSP.

This illegal logging, including in the Kutai National Park, has been going on for years. Great ship loads of illegal timber leaving the port, and it's taken until now for this to come to light publicly.

So, are you wondering why it is we never seem to hear from thse big groups like WWF, WCS, TNC about such logging? Do you wonder how this logging in East Kalimantan (Borneo) could have carried on so blatantly without a conservation group out there raising hell? I am.

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Tuesday, 29 September, 2009 | 17:02 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Several senior police officers in Kalimantan have been removed from their post for ongoing illegal logging in their jurisdiction, the national police informed on Tuesday.

The National Police Chief Bambang Danuri, who has been dragged into the anti-graft commission controversy said on Tuesday in an inspection in East Kalimantan Province, that he has replace the Chief of Central Kalimantan Police Brigadier General Syamsuridzal and removed several chiefs at the lower units below the provincial police.

“I have replace the Central Kalimantan Police Chief. There was ignorance on illegal logging in the province, everyday there were timber-loaded cargo boats leave the region,” General Bambang said at Sepinggan Airport in Balikpapan.

Police chiefs from several regency-level police headquarters (one level below the provincial police) were also sacked, General Bambang said.

Bambang was in the province to inspect a haul of around 17,000 logs of timber from illegal logging operation in Paser Regency in East Kalimantan.

Two officials from the forestry office in Paser Regency have been named suspects by the police, while two timber contractors from PT Anugerah Abadi Multi Usaha and CV Sukses Abadi were currently on the run.

SG WIBISONO

http://www.tempointeractive.com/hg/hukum/2009/09/29/brk,20090929-199897,uk.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.