Nature Alert: Letter: Copenhagen and rainforests

Thursday, 3 December 2009

Letter: Copenhagen and rainforests

Letter: Copenhagen and rainforests

Wed, 12/02/2009 | Opinion The Jakarta Post

Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to bulldozers in Riau province last week resorted to this protest as a final, desperate measure before the Copenhagen Climate Summit to ask the Indonesian government to take the problem of deforestation in Indonesia seriously.

Summit leaders need to make this issue the top priority on their Plant a Tree to Save the Planet agenda, and, more importantly, act swiftly to prevent further rainforest devastation. There will be grave repercussions for us all if deforestation is not halted, but I doubt anyone will feel the effects of apathy more than orangutans. It would be the end for them.

In Sumatra there are less than 6,000 red apes left, Borneo has more but for how much longer? Numbers are in free-fall. As these islands ever-increasingly resemble post-apocalyptic landscapes denuded of all trees and life, orangutans are left literally homeless and starving and are dying in thousands as a direct result.

However, it is not just a matter of saving their environment; attitudes need to drastically change, too. The recent exposure of palm oil workers who tortured two baby orangutans after killing and eating their mothers in front of them, is a shockingly cruel example of how orangutans are regarded as "pests" or worse when only 3 percent DNA separates them from humans.

If orangutans were respected and legally protected (and not just in theory as is presently the case) then eradicating their habitat and torturing them would be a serious criminal offence. Stringent law enforcement to protect this species must be part of any forest preservation law to benefit wildlife. I hope world leaders realize saving forests is about humanity extending compassion to all other life forms who, like us, deserve to live in peace in their native habitats, free from the threat of destructive human invasion.

I am not the first person to plead with the Indonesian government to save its rainforests and orangutans. I hope I will be the last but not for the wrong reasons - that pretty soon there will be no orangutans left to plead for. If Copenhagen turns into just another inactive talking shop, then it could well be "do or die" for the orangutan.

Jeanie Elford
London

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/12/02/letter-copenhagen-and-rainforests.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.