Nature Alert: Kalimantan Has Good Potential For Oil Palm Plantation

Monday 25 January 2010

Kalimantan Has Good Potential For Oil Palm Plantation

January 24, 2010

Kalimantan Has Good Potential For Oil Palm Plantation

From Nashir Mansor

BALIKPAPAN (East Kalimantan), Jan 24 (Bernama) -- Kalimantan offers vast potential for Malaysian investors to venture into oil palm plantation.

PT Dermaga Perkasapratama operations director Leong Kim Wah, who is from Kuala Lumpur, said the reason being that there were vast acres of land suitable to be used for oil palm plantation in Kalimantan.

"Those keen should liaise directly with the district officer or mayor and the governor," he told a group of businessman from Sabah who were on a 10-day tour of Kalimantan.

The trip, sponsored by the Berjaya Foundation, is to look into investment potentials in the Indonesian province.

On Pt Dermaga Perkasapratama, which is a subsidiary of Bayan Group, Leong said the company had been in East Kalimantan since the 1980s and was involved in the construction of infrastructures for the oil and gas industry.

He said that in 1974 the company ventured into coal mining.

"Last year, the company produced 10 million metric tonne of coal. Coal produced by the company is exported to Asian countries, including Malaysia, and also to Europe," he added.

Leong said Pt Dermaga Perkasapratama, which had its headoffice in Jakarta, could produce up to 11 million metric tonne of coal a year from its six mines located in areas in Balikpapan.

-- BERNAMA

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=470684

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.