LOS ANGELES — The American Palm Oil Council (APOC) today announced that the Malaysian palm oil industry, together with the Malaysian government, has launched the Malaysian Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund (MPOWCF).

The MPOWCF is a $6.4 million revolving fund dedicated to studies, efforts and initiatives in conserving the wildlife and the environment. The Malaysian palm oil industry and the government provided equal funds to create the MPOWCF, which was officially announced last month at the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference in Malaysia.

“For years Malaysia has been working to develop and implement policies and practices that result in palm oil that can truly be considered sustainable and we hope that this fund will further support those efforts,” said Mohd Salleh Kassim, Executive Director of APOC. “Especially given the worldwide concerns about the environmental impact of biofuels, we must do everything we can to ensure the protection and conservation of wildlife and biodiversity.” (more…)

HANOI — Speaking at the recent Asia-Pacific Forestry Week in Vietnam, keynote speaker Dr. Norman Myers of Great Britain stated: “I’m going to give you my bottom-line message right now, up front, this is a super crisis that we are facing, it’s an appalling crisis, it’s one of the worst crises since we came out of our caves 10,000 years ago. I’m referring of course to elimination of tropical forests and of their millions of species.”

Dr. Myers continued, stating that when he first went to school “across the tropics there was a bright rich green band denoting tropical forests” on his atlas. “I put to you that we have lost half of all that green band and unless we start to do a far better job than we have been doing than by the time my children and so on, so on and my grandchildren are in school than they will have atlases than they will see not a bright green band across the tropics but the might have to color those atlases a dirty brown color to show that was once there has now disappeared. And what was once there, it says something super special, it is the most exuberant and colorful, and diverse expression of nature that has ever graced the face of this planet in many millions of years. That is what is at stake here.” (more…)

JAKARTA — Environmental group Greenpeace has echoed calls by consumer goods giant Unilever to impose a moratorium on deforestation in Indonesia in support for the company’s pledge to purchase only certified sustainable palm oil.

Greenpeace also urged the country’s palm oil plantations to use sustainable forest management methods and stop expanding into peatland forests.

“Unilever’s calls for a moratorium on forest destruction in Indonesia should become an entry point for the government to stop the deforestation process,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia political advisor Arif Wicaksono. “The government has to take action to reverse deforestation by initiating a moratorium on logging and forest conversion.” (more…)

SAMBOJA — Six years ago the area around Samboja in Borneo was like much of the world’s tropical rainforest: denuded. The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.

But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world.

The secret was to use more than 1,300 species of local tree and a fertiliser made with cow urine, says Dr Willie Smits, the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting. ‘The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,’ says Smits. (more…)