Tiger skins, orangutans and rare caged primates openly sold at markets in the heart of Indonesia’s capital are the most brazen and visible aspect of a thriving illegal wildlife trade.

Indonesia is struggling to take on a multi-million-dollar industry that is stripping the archipelago nation’s vast forests of endangered species for enormous profit by selling them to buyers around the world.

With corruption rife and authorities overwhelmed, conservationists say police and forestry officials have barely made a dent.

Activists and the government estimate Indonesia loses at least 80 million dollars a year through the illegal trade, with rare animals — dead and alive — being sold at huge mark-ups once they get to overseas markets.

“What’s interesting is that an orangutan caught in Kalimantan (on Borneo island) costs no more than three million rupiah (327 dollars) and is sold in Jakarta for five million rupiah,” said Asep Purnama from the non-government organisation ProFauna.

“Once they get to Taiwan they will sell for around 100 million rupiah and in Europe they’ll sell for 400 million,” he said, adding that an estimated 100 orangutans are taken every year from Kalimantan’s forests alone.
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New findings by the Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) show that orangutans are surviving in pockets of forest within the oil palm plantations in Sabah and that it is possible for the orangutans to travel and live within the plantations.

“This initial finding is part of the effort to realise our goal towards creating a contiguous forest within the landscape and thus will benefit a wider range for wildlife habitat and movement,” said BCT Chief Executive Officer, Cyril Pinso.

BCT has been commissioned by Malaysia Palm Oil Corporation (MPOC) to undertake a survey of the orangutan population in Sabah, including those residing within oil palm plantations.

Pinso said recent reports that majority of the isolated orangutans in the Kinabatangan area would go extinct in less than 50 years if nothing is done is true.

BCT is a state-mandated tax-exempt NGO established in 2006, and promoted by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment. It was incorporated under the Trustee’s Ordinance 1951, Cap. 148 (Sabah), to deal with the pressing needs to preserve the habitat and the migration route of Borneo’s most endangered wildlife along the Kinabatangan and the Segama Rivers.

This migration route referred to as BCT Green Corridor is part and parcel of BCT’s mission.

As a first token step, BCT has bought five acres in the Kinabatangan area to connect this corridor, supported by funds from Japanese individuals.

At the same time, it also raised awareness to deal with the continuing challenges concerning our conservation efforts for the benefit of wildlife and the environment, including restoring Malaysia’s image in the oil palm industry.

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The Orangutan Conservancy, which helped broker the negotiations with Hollywood animal trainers that resulted in the donation this week of six orangutans to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, hailed the deal as a positive step for conservation.

The first two orangutans – a 19-year old female named Katy (pictured above) and her three-year old son, Rocky – arrived at the Des Moines, Iowa, facility on July 12. The remaining four will follow over the course of the summer.

“This is wonderful news, not only for the orangutans that worked in entertainment, but also for wild orangutans in Indonesia,” said Norm Rosen, president of the Orangutan Conservancy. “The idea of laughing at an orangutan in a television commercial or a greeting card might seem harmless, but there is a very direct correlation between the way we view orangutans in America or Europe and the way they are perceived in Southeast Asia.”

Added Rosen: “The sooner we stop regarding orangutans as props, the sooner we’ll be able to make effective arguments to the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia to protect them and the forests in which they live.”

The six orangutans – two males and four females – were donated to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa by Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife, which was the last major supplier of trained orangutans for television, films and advertising. Rocky was generally regarded as the most visible orangutan in media today, having appeared in recent television advertisements for Capital One and Aflac and an Elle magazine spread with pop star Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas.
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JAKARTA — The leaders of Indonesia and Brazil have agreed that their developing nations, home to much of the world’s remaining tropical forest, would cooperate on biofuels after talks covering climate change and food.

The two nations signed an agreement on July 12 for Indonesia to send experts to Brazil to study its biofuel developments, said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“Brazil has been successful developing bioethanol and of course Indonesia can learn from the research and development,” Yudhoyono told a news conference after talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazil, a pioneer of mass ethanol usage in cars, has been mixing the sugar cane-based fuel with gasoline for decades, as well as running a vast fleet of vehicles on pure ethanol.

Indonesia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, has also been pushing biofuels to cut the use of costly petroleum products, and aims to make mandatory the use of a 2.5 percent blend of biodiesel by September. Indonesia’s forests in Sumatra and Borneo are home to the world’s last remaining wild populations of orangutans.

The biofuel sector has come under attack from green groups for accelerating the destruction of forests, while some analysts blame it for contributing to soaring world food prices by diverting land that could be used for food crops.
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