Nature Alert: Saving orangutans

Thursday, 1 October 2009

Saving orangutans

For everyone who has been sickened/saddened by many of the photos of orangutans in West Kalimantan in need of help and rescuing, the good news is, help has begun to arrive and will grow in scale with every passing week. http://internationalanimalrescue.org/news/2009/aug09-28.shtml

This is the best news I have had in a long time. International Animal Rescue (IAR) have not only got the necessary experience, staff, resources and skills, it has been rescuing other primates in Indonesia for some years, which has gone a long way towards them receiving permission and cooperation from the government to now rescue orangutans and to build a new rescue centre for them.

We have COP to thank for investigating and exposing what was happening in West Kalimantan; this is the kind of work they do best. Their work all over Borneo continues, safe in the knowledge IAR will now be rescuing and hopefully one day rehabilitating back to the wild the very many orangutans COP has previously documented in Western Kalimantan/Borneo.

I'm sure we all want to wish IAR every success.

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.