Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono recently defended Indonesia’s drive to expand oil palm plantations, despite a demand by environmentalists for a moratorium on deforestation.

Speaking in his keynote address at the opening of the sixth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) on November 19 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Apriyantono said any moratorium, including that recently called for by Greenpeace, was beyond the control of the Indonesian government.

The four-day meeting will discuss issues such as the certification program for members, palm oil small-scale growers, the RSPO and the government, and market standards for biofuel.

The RSPO was established by NGOs and business operators involved in the production, processing and sale of palm oil, in response to criticisms that oil palm plantations were causing rapid deforestation.

“The government has its own program of preserving our forests; we aim to keep 60 percent of our forests in addition to allocated protected forests,” the minister said.

He said Indonesia still had 23 million hectares of protected forest.

“Out of 133 million hectares of land, only 6.3 million hectares, or about 5 percent, have been planted with oil palms — arguably a very small area compared to what other countries have done with their natural forests,” Apriyantono said.

But data from independent monitor Sawit Watch shows that in addition to the land already planted, another 18 million hectares have been cleared for plantation expansions.

Sawit Watch deputy director Abetnego Tarigan said development programs by regional administrations were targeting oil palm plantation expansions — especially in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua — of up to 20 million hectares.

“Another new plan still under negotiation deals with the development of the world’s largest oil palm plantation, covering 1.8 million hectares in the heart of Kalimantan,” he said.

Tarigan suggested that instead of expanding plantations, it was time to intensify existing estates and improve current yields of only 10 to 15 tons of palm oil per hectare per year — far less than the 25 tons per hectare per year recorded in Malaysia.

In 2006, Indonesia became the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Last year, total production reached 16.9 million tons, and is projected to reach almost 18 million tons this year, or 26.2 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production.

Of the 2006 figure, 5 million tons was sold domestically, with 11.8 million tons exported, Apriyantono said.

“In term of palm oil exports, Indonesia managed to substantially raise foreign exchange earnings from only US$745 million in 1998 to $7.9 billion in 2007,” he said.

He added some 5 million smallholders were employed in the industry.

“I challenge everyone — NGOs and stakeholders — to come up with positive news of benefits as well as successful and positive multi-stakeholder collaborative projects,” the minister said.

(Source: The Jakarta Post)

National Geographic article reports majestic forests are vanishing in smoke and sawdust, but there’s still hope for the island’s fabled biodiversity—if the palm oil rush can be slowed.

First, I will tell you about the Borneo of your dreams.

The day starts well before dawn with the lunatic hooting of gibbons, the rain forest’s alarm clock, lovers and rivals wooing and warning each other from the treetops in an urgent ape language that I, their terrestrial relative, can only guess at.

From my camp a creekside trail leads into forest past trees whose massive trunks rise a hundred feet to the lowest branches. As sunlight makes its feeble way through the dense green canopy, another primate, a long-tailed macaque, walks along the stream below, hoping for a breakfast of fish or frog. Whether it’s successful or not, its expression of perpetual irritation will never change. No sooner has the monkey disappeared upstream than a pair of short-tailed mongooses bound down to the bank, seemingly more intent on fun than food.

At a clearing, a pair of rhinoceros hornbills fly to a fruiting tree on loud-whooshing wings and begin to feed. Mostly black, nearly the size of turkeys, they have huge red-and-yellow casques on their bills that gleam in the sun like polished lacquer. The birds outshine everything else in the forest until a hand-size shape flits erratically past at waist level, deep velvety black, but also crimson and electric green, screaming neon green, a color as gaudy as the name of this creature: Rajah Brooke’s birdwing. At almost seven inches across, it’s one of the largest butterflies in the world. If the rhinoceros hornbill doesn’t take your breath away—if the Rajah Brooke’s birdwing doesn’t—have someone hold your wrist and check for a pulse.

Later I take a small boat down a broad river called the Kinabatangan, then up a side channel as narrow as an alleyway. A troop of proboscis monkeys climb through the branches overhead, where they will spend the night in tall trees beside the water. The potbellied male, ridiculously outsize nose hanging from his face like a ripe fruit, is so ugly he’s endearing, in a kind of bibulous-old-uncle way. Most of the pointy-nosed females under his watch cradle young at their breasts. Silvered leaf monkeys look down from above, and a bearded pig stands just inside the forest to watch us pass. As the boat drifts below an overhanging branch, a four-foot-long water monitor lizard drops into the water.

A Borneo pygmy elephant enters the river and swims in front of the boat, blowing like a whale. “Pygmy” it may be in comparison to other elephants, but when it emerges dark and shining on the opposite bank, it’s as if an island is rising from the sea. I see where it’s going: A herd of around 30 animals—a long-tusked bull, many adult females, and various young—munch tangled vines beside the main river, expressionless as statues and only marginally more animated.

This is the mythic Borneo, the island of the world’s imagination, and it’s all as wondrous as it sounds. But if you want to see the real Borneo, the Borneo of the first decade of the 21st century, it would be good to be the crested serpent-eagle perched in a tree across the river. Then you could soar high above the Kinabatangan and see how quickly the unruly forest gives way to neatly planted rows of oil palm trees, stretching for mile after mile in all directions. The palm plantation is lush and green, and the arching fronds of the trees give it an exotic beauty, and for the incomparable biodiversity of Borneo it is inexorable death.

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In the face of rampant poaching of endangered animals, conservationists are calling for Malaysia to reform its 36-year-old wildlife protection law.

Four environmental groups — Malaysian Nature Society, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, Wildlife Conservation Society, and WWF-Malaysia — have launched a petition demanding that the Malaysian government improve and strengthen the country’s Protection of Wild Life Act 1972, which the NGOs call “severely outdated and riddled with loopholes”. The petition seeks 100,000 signatures by June 2009.

“There is a serious need for the Malaysian government to remedy the loopholes and beef up the law, as many species continue to be poached and illegally traded at alarming rates,” states the petition. “Wildlife offenders often escape arrest, prosecution and punishment. We understand that the government is in the process of revising this law. However, we urge the government to seek public input in this process.”

An estimated 12,300 orangutans remain in the Malaysian region of northern Borneo.
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Popi, the scene-stealing orangutan who starred opposite Clint Eastwood 30 years ago in a blockbuster movie and headlined a Las Vegas floor show, is writing her own script at Great Ape Trust of Iowa.

Popi, now 37, is the third of eight orangutans moving to Great Ape Trust from the Los Angeles area, where a company specializing in providing trained animals for the entertainment and advertising industries privately owned them. The company, Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife has decided to discontinue the use of orangutans in entertainment and donate the orangutans to Great Ape Trust.

Popi, one of at least three orangutans who appeared with Eastwood in the 1980 hit “Any Which Way You Can,” also was the featured orangutan in Las Vegas nightclub performer Bobby Berosini’s Lido de Paris floor show at the Stardust Resort & Casino in the 1980s. She also appeared with Berosini in Branson, Mo., before retiring from show business around 2001 with her move to Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife.

The Martins’ business was the sole supplier of entertainment orangutans on the West Coast, and their decision to shutter that part of it had a significant impact on the use of orangutans in entertainment, said Dr. Rob Shumaker, Great Ape Trust’s director of orangutan research and a member of the board of the orangutan Conservancy. He said the Martins were driven by genuine welfare concerns, and it was important for them to find a destination they approved of for their orangutans.

“In this new chapter in Popi’s life, she appears to be delighted by all the new things around her and the additional choices she can make,” said Shumaker, pictured above with Popi.
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