The Intimate Ape is one of the first books to juxtapose the intelligence and empathy of orangutans with their current extinction status in situ, and uses examples from the spectrum of orangutans found in captivity and in the wild.

The Fresno Chaffee Zoo event, “Measuring the Worth of the Life of One Orangutan: A Celebration and Commemoration,” will occur at 5 p.m. (PST) and will be streamed live via the internet. A panel of experts will discuss a variety of orangutan issues, focusing primarily on Aazk, an orangutan featured in the book that died at the zoo in 2003 of natural causes.

The book includes a number of projects supported by the Orangutan Conservancy (OC), including the rescue and rehabilitation centers in Borneo and Sumatra, and conservation outreach programs such as the Orang Utan Republik Education Initiative.

“This is a fascinating book, and Shawn Thompson has done an excellent job of revealing orangutans to be intelligent, sensitive and dynamic beings,” said OC president Norm Rosen. “Each of the stories in this book help build the case for saving orangutans, but it goes one step further — it adds an urgency that OC is proud to support.”

Thompson is a former journalist who teaches at Thompson Rivers College in Canada. He traveled widely in preparation for writing The Intimate Ape, and said he believes understanding our own connection with orangutans could help us as human beings.

“The way our human culture has developed over thousands of years, we have disowned and denied and in a sense orphaned a branch of our family, much as we did earlier in western history with other human races” Thompson said. “Caring about orangutans would help return us to our larger family on the planet.”

The Orangutan Conservancy was established in 1999 to support projects that focus on wild orangutan protection; reintroduction; education; and research. The Orangutan Conservancy is a partner of the Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP). For more information, please visit the OC website or contact click to email.

(Source: OC staff)

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral.

The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – empty forest syndrome – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

“There’s lots of forest where there are just no big animals left,” says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. “There are some forests where you don’t even hear birds.”

Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price. Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.

Vincent Nijman, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University who has investigated the trade, said: “We see species that are in fashion traded in great numbers until they are wiped out and people can’t get them any more. So another one comes in, and then that is wiped out, and then another comes in.”

He added: “In Asia, everybody knows the value of wildlife, so people go into the forest and, whatever they encounter, they know it has a value and that there is someone they can sell it to.”

Nijman’s research offers the first glimpse of the size of this widespread trade. While most people are aware of illegal sales of rhino horn and ivory, he says it is the scale of the movement of lesser-known species that is most disturbing.

He analysed 53,000 records of imports and exports from countries under CITES, the international convention that regulates the sale of wildlife. Most common species are not listed under CITES, so do not appear in the records. Trade in the most endangered, such as rhino and tiger, is banned. Nijman looked at species considered vulnerable enough that trade is allowed, but controlled.

“I’m not against the wildlife trade at all. I think it is a very important economic driver for a large part of the region and a lot of people are dependent on it,” Nijman said. “But it has to be done in such a way that you don’t finish it all this year. It’s not like oil, where you drill it out and then it’s gone. If you organise and
regulate it properly, it should go on for ever.”

CITES records between 1998 and 2007 showed that of more than 35 million animals exported during that period, some 30 million were taken from the wild. The EU and Japan were among the most significant importers.

For some mammal species, the proportion sourced from the wild dropped significantly over the decade, and traders were forced to rely increasingly on captive-bred animals. Official trade in birds virtually disappeared by 2007, probably because of bird flu restrictions.

The bulk of seahorses traded were in the form of dried specimens for Chinese medicine. “The moment you look into the wildlife trade in south-east Asia, China is the biggest challenge, because they can use everything and they will use everything.”

Trade in the Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater, illustrates the problem. Officially, countries do not allow their commercial sale and agreed a zero quota under CITES in 2000, though regular seizures show widespread trade, for medicine and meat. “The countries closest to China get emptied [of pangolin] first. Vietnam and Laos have been drained. Myanmar has been drained and they are working south, so now Indonesia is being emptied of pangolins,” Shepherd says. “Prices are very high and in the next few years we will see pangolins being sucked out of Africa to supply the demand.”

Nijman says his analysis of the CITES records, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, inevitably underestimates the scale of the trade. “There is always an unknown quantity of CITES-listed species that are traded without being reported, and on top of that, probably much larger, is the trade in non-CITES species, which are the species that we think are still common enough to be traded without controls.”

One of these is the tokay gecko. “Every¬one who has been to Indonesia or Malaysia will know them because they are the ones that sit in your hotel room. You have them everywhere.” Although not listed by CITES, Indonesia has set a limit of 45,000 of the lizards exported each year as pets. Nijman says the true number traded is much higher, perhaps into the millions. “We can’t say whether a million tokay geckos being traded a
year, or two million, is too many. Perhaps there are so many it is OK. But you would think that if they set the quota at 45,000 then a million is too much.”

Such geckos can be typically bought in rural villages for a few cents each, and sold for $10 – a profit margin that rivals the drugs trade. “It’s a great business. No wonder organised crime gets involved and starts running things,” Shepherd says. “In Malaysia if you get caught selling drugs you get the death penalty. For wildlife crime the maximum
fine is about $5,000.”

The situation is acute in south-east Asia, but the trade, both legal and illegal, is global, often using the internet and courier delivery. For $4,000, an illegal trader based in Indonesia will send a three-year-old ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar, one of the most endangered animals in the world.

Other species sell for as much as $20,000, though Nijman and Shepherd do not want to advertise which ones. “People do know about the rhinos and the tigers, but the vast majority of this trade is in stuff that they didn’t know existed,” said Shepherd. “A handful of people are getting very rich and most people are getting screwed out of their natural
resources.”

(Source: The Observer)

In a report highlighting the 25 most endangered primate species, conservationists have outlined the desperate plight of primates from Madagascar, Africa, Asia and Central and South America, with some populations down to just a few dozen in number.

The golden headed langur, which is found only on the island of Cat Ba in north-eastern Vietnam, is down to 60 to 70 individuals. And there are fewer than 100 northern sportive lemurs left in Madagascar, and around 110 eastern black crested gibbons in northeastern Vietnam.

Sumatran orangutans, which are thought to number approximately 6,600 in the wild, are categorized as “critically endangered,” while the Bornean orangutan (54,000) is listed as “endangered.”

Of the world’s 634 primate species, 48% are classified as threatened with extinction on the IUCN’s “red list” of threatened species. The latest report was compiled by 85 primatologists working in the field and will be launched today at Bristol Zoo by a coalition of conservation groups including the IUCN and Conservation International and the International Primatological Society

“All over the world, it’s mainly habitat destruction that affects primates the most,” said Christoph Schwitzer, head of research at the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “Illegal logging, fragmentation of forests through fires, hunting is a big issue in several African countries and also now in Madagascar. In Asia one of the main problems is trade in hearts for traditional medicine, mainly into China.”

Russell Mittermeier, a primatologist and president of Conservation International, said: “The purpose of our top 25 list is to highlight those that are most at risk, to attract the attention of the public, to stimulate national governments to do more, and especially to find the resources to implement desperately needed conservation measures. In particular, we want to encourage governments to commit to biodiversity conservation measures when they gather in Japan in October. We have the resources to address this crisis, but so far, we have failed to act.”

There are fewer than 320 Delacour’s Langurs left in Vietnam, thanks to the trade in the animals’ bones, organs and other tissues for traditional medicines. The Sumatran organgutan is down to around 6,600 due to fragmentation of their habitats and the removal of forest to make way for agricultural uses such as palm oil plantations.

Schwitzer said that the primate he monitors, the blue-eyed black lemur in Madagascar, has suffered from the rapid destruction of forests in recent years and now numbers no more than 2,300. “With the political crisis in Madagascar, this has been exaggerated in the last year or two, with lots more illegal logging and now even the government is selling logging concessions more or less illegally.”

With some populations of primates down to just a few hundreds or thousands, many species are at imminent risk of extinction. “There are no small disasters for small populations, the disasters are always big,” said Schwitzer. “Even if they are a few thousand, they can be wiped out by a couple of events like cyclones. It’s very easy for these populations to fail.”

Schemes such as the UN’s Redd programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), which are being proposed as part of any global deal to tackle climate change, will be crucial in maintaining falling primate populations. The idea is that rich countries would pay developing countries to maintain their forests, therefore locking in the carbon and preventing further greenhouse gas
emissions. In an enhanced version of the idea, developing countries will be incentivised to plant more trees, growing their forest areas.

“Several countries and governments have pledged support – if this is going to happen and it’s well done, then we stand a good chance to be able to save some of these primates’ forest habitats for the future,” said Schwitzer.

And conservation measures can work, if they are put in place in time. There have been some limited successes, for example, in helping some primate species to recover – the black lion tamarin was moved from “critically endangered” to “endangered” on the IUCN Red List, similar to the golden lion tamarin in 2003. That was the result of more than 30
years of conservation effort at zoos and by scientists.

Schwitzer hoped the new report would highlight the extent of the dangers facing some of humankinds’ closest relatives in the wild. “Support and action to help save these species is vital if we are to avoid losing these wonderful animals forever.”

(Source: The Guardian)

The films, which will be screened at The Old Music Hall (106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford) beginning at 6: 30 p.m., will use a newly developed Pedal Power Cinema. Admission is £3 ($5).

Conservationist Ian Redmond, OBE, will be the guest speaker for the evening. Redmond has worked with great apes for over 30 years and will be on hand to share his experiences and answer any questions. There will also be a raffle, refreshments and merchandise for sale.

Places are limited so pre-booking is strongly recommended. Please contact 01865 403343 (U.K.) or e-mail: click to email.

All money raised at this event will go towards a Pedal Power Cinema for conservation education projects with communities living near the last remaining forests in Sumatra.

(Source: Great Apes Film Initiative)

“The industry wants to be part of the efforts that not only show concern for the environment, but in fact actually take an active part in its conservation, ” chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), Dato’ Lee Yeow Chor, told the conference.

While several environmentalists expressed doubt of the industry’s commitment to rainforest conservation, Dr. Marc Ancrenaz, the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Hutan, the NGO that helped organize the event, was encouraged that the two sides are at least talking. As a follow up to the meeting, and some of the spin that followed, Ancrenaz answered some questions on palm oil in Sabah and the Kinabatangan river basin, where Hutan focuses its efforts.

Q: Do you agree with claims by organisations such as World Growth that the oil palm
industry is not directly responsible for the decline of orang-utan?
Dr. Ancrenaz: These claims are untrue, irresponsible and are misleading. Genetic studies in Sabah show that orang-utan population have declined by 50 to 90% over the past few decades. This severe decline is due to several causes such as hunting and pet trade, but the foremost reason is forest losses when the forest is cut down and converted to agriculture. In Borneo and Sumatra where wild orang-utans live, forest is primarily converted to palm oil and industrial tree plantations. Forest conversion results in an
extreme loss of biodiversity and the destruction of species like the orang-utans. There is no doubt about this.

Q: In this case why does World Growth and others in the palm oil industry make such false claims?
Dr. A: I think this is because you have two “groups”, the orang-utan group and the palm oil group. People on both sides are so passionate that it becomes difficult to have an impartial view of the true
situation on the ground. The industry is under attack by environmentalists and has adopted a very defensive “greenwashing” approach denying there are the root cause of the problem. NGOs have adopted the opposite strategy called “blackwashing” and blame the industry for all problems encountered in the field, which is not true either. This situation is very sad since the debate in its current stage cannot move in any direction at all. We all need to work together to identify solutions.

Q: Is this why you worked with the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) recently?
Dr. A: Here, I have to begin by paying tribute to the former Director of the Sabah Wildlife Department, the late Datuk Patrick Mahadi Andau. As a Board Member of the Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT), he was approached by the MPOC to develop a project in Sabah and he suggested to look at the status of orang-utans within the palm oil landscape. This survey provided the occasion to deliver precise and immediate information directly to MPOC in order for the industry to incorporate these findings in their land use strategies. Since MPOC opened the door for some collaboration, I felt it was crucial for environmentalist and this industry to sit together and try to find solutions to improve the situation on the ground.

Q: But why look within oil palm plantations?
Dr. A: Surveys conducted in 2004 by HUTAN and the Sabah Wildlife Department revealed that there were 11,000 orang-utans in Sabah but an amazing 62% were found outside of Protected Areas in non-protected forests mostly exploited for timber. However nothing was known about orang-utans “inside” oil palm
plantations and we wanted to investigate if orang-utans were found inside the palm oil landscape.

Q: So what is the situation within the oil palm landscape in Sabah Dr. Ancrenaz?
Dr. A: Today, oil palm plantations cover a staggering 14,000 square kilometers of Sabah, that’s equal to having 20 Singapore in landmass of palm oil! This is why Sabah is the number one producer of Malaysian palm oil. Palms need to be planted in lowlands below 500 meters, unfortunately these
lowland forests used to be inhabited by large concentrations of orang-utans and other wildlife before the forest was converted to agriculture. Developing oil palm plantations in lowland habitats is therefore destroying
the home of the unique biodiversity found in Borneo. On a more localized scale, we have been studying orang-utans in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary since 1998. The Sanctuary is home to about 1,000 orang-utans, but this habitat is highly “broken up” in isolated patches of forests that are
surrounded by oil palm plantations. We recently realized that young male orang-utans were disappearing from our study site but we didn’t have any clue where were they going? Of course, we wanted to investigate this
further, and this project conducted under BCT with funding from MPOC gave us the opportunity to investigate this situation in Eastern Sabah.

Q: And what did you find?
Dr. A: We found a surprising high number of orang-utan nests within extremely isolated and degraded tree patches located within oil palm plantations and in mangrove forests that have been cut off from mainland forests by the development of oil palm plantations. We estimate that a few
hundred individuals are found in the extensive palm oil landscape of Eastern Sabah, namely the watershed of the Kinabatangan, Segama and Sugut Rivers…

Q: Does this mean that the orang-utans have adapted to surviving within palm oil plantations?
Dr. A: I want to be absolutely clear here, so that these findings are not misquoted by others again, orang-utans have not adapted to the palm oil landscape and cannot survive within the palm oil landscape in its present condition today. It is equivalent to asking a human to survive on eating
potatoes alone. Just as humans need a variety of food sources for survival and health, so do the orang-utans. In the course of our research in the Kinabatangan we have identified more than 300 different species of plant-life being consumed by the orang-utans in the forest, which is their
natural habitat.

Q: But Dr. Ancrenaz, if you found orang-utans within the palm oil landscape does that not mean they are surviving?
Dr. A: No, it does not. We need to consider the ecology of the orang-utans. First, when they reach adulthood, the males are leaving the forests where they have been born in search of new forests to establish their territory and this is what we call “dispersal”. However, today the forest is heavily
fragmented, cut off and isolated in smaller patches, especially in places like the Kinabatangan floodplain. In Sabah this is mostly due to oil palm plantations. So, the orang-utan has no choice, they take the risk crossing the oil palm landscape looking for forest patches. During their travel in the plantations, they eat the fruits and young leaves of the palm for survival as they search for new forest. They have to walk on the ground and make nest in tree patches that they find. The question is how long does it take for them to find forest patches that are large enough for their survival, a week, a month? Do they make it? Are they getting lost in this vast uniform landscapes? We don’t know all the answers to these questions
yet.

Q: Why can’t they just stay put in the forest they are in, why do they disperse?
Dr. A.: Through dispersal the animals mix their genes and this process prevents inbreeding and other genetic disorders to happen in populations. In addition, small forests fragments can lead to overcrowding and fighting between orang-utans who are competing for scarce food resources. In this
case, dispersal is necessary to regulate the number of animals who can survive in isolated forest patches.

Q: So, what now?
Dr. A: There is so much we can do right now to help the orang-utans in Sabah and our findings really give the opportunity to the oil palm industry to contribute to the protection of this species after having heavily contributed to its decline in the past. The priority would be for plantations to make serious effort to establish forest corridors throughout their estates to link isolated forests that are still home to orang-utans. However, this approach is site specific. Let me take the Kinabatangan Floodplain as an example. The participants of the recent 2009 Orang-utan Colloquium organized in Kota Kinabalu asked for the establishment of a contiguous corridor of forest for an absolute minimum of 100 meters along
the river bank. Such a corridor would go a long way to assisting orang-utan crossing the oil palm landscape when they disperse as well as other wildlife such as the Bornean Elephant which is only found in Sabah and on the border with Indonesian Kalimantan.

Q: Hasn’t this been done yet? Much has been written about such contributions within the Kinabatangan by the palm oil industry?
Dr. A: Yes, much has been written and said about Kinabatangan, but in many places you still find palms up to the river banks along the Kinabatangan River, leaving no chance for animals to disperse but going through the plantations. Recreating forest corridors along the river would provide the animals with pathways and food. In addition, these corridors will benefit other wildlife species and will greatly contribute to improve water quality by buffering the negative impacts of agriculture practices on the
environment. Some palm companies are already engaged in corridor recreation in their estates, but the amount of land given is minuscule, and real action has to be taken at the landscape level if we want to secure the future of Kinabatangan overall. The State Government is already taking action via the Sabah Wildlife Department and the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment who are working to create this “Corridor of Life” for the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. Meanwhile, it is sad that so much resource is allocated for greenwashing activities promoted by organizations like World Growth especially when unfounded claims are continuously made towards promoting the value of orang-utans without trying improving the situation on the ground. Let me be clear on this, what I mean here is that it is high
time to solve or at least minimize the problems on the ground in order to increase the chances of orang-utan survival. Stop greenwashing and start putting money into replanting corridors and forest patches in adequate size. As recognized during the Colloquium, there is a general feeling that this industry has taken much from the natural resources and that it is time to give back before the collapse of the ecosystems. At the end, no one argues against the economical value of palm oil and its possible contribution for
development. However it is important to do the right thing and then truly settle this debate and issue of sustainable palm oil.

Dr. Marc Ancrenaz is a wildlife biologist with 20 years of experience in Africa, Saudi Arabia and Borneo. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as PLOS Biology, Nature, Animal Conservation, etc and is a reviewer for several scientific journals himself. Dr. Ancrenaz is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of French Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) HUTAN which is based in the village of Sukau along the Kinabatangan River located on the East Coast of the State of Sabah, Malaysia on the
island of Borneo. Since, 1998, Hutan has been working with the Sabah Wildlife Department on orang-utan conservation issues in the wild. Dr. Ancrenaz is also a member of the Advisory Panel with the Sabah Wildlife
Department. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Section for Great Apes in the IUCN Species Survival Commission of the Primate Specialist Group.

(Source: Mongabay.com)

Rules governing the use of biofuels were supposed to be designed to sort out the sustainable versions of the technology from their dirtier cousins following a massive backlash against it in 2008. At the time, an avalanche of reports revealed that many forms of the fuel source both increase greenhouse gas emissions and put pressure on food prices.

The production of palm oil was one of the most egregious examples of the problem.

In the wake of the biofuels boom, there has been a rush to chop down rainforests to make way for palm oil plantations. The UN says that the growth in such plantations is now the main cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Worse still are the land grabs and human rights abuses resulting from the lucrative business. In Indonesia, as EUobserver reported two years ago, when native communities complain about the loss of their lands, private security firms and police that collude with the oil companies crack down violently on protesters.

But in a manoeuvre that has shocked environmental campaigners, a draft commission communication offering guidance to EU member states on the use of biofuels has classified palm oil plantations – the source of one of the most destructive forms of biofuels – as “forests.”

Essentially, the document argues that because palm oil plantations are tall enough and shady enough, they count as forests.

“Continuously forested areas are defined as areas where trees have reached, or can reach, at least heights of five metres, making up a crown cover of more than 30 percent,” reads the jargon-filled document.
“They would normally include forest, forest plantations and other tree plantations such as palm oil. Short rotation coppice [the practice of repeatedly cutting young tree stems down] may qualify if it fulfils the height and canopy cover criteria.”

“This means, for example, that a change from forest to oil palm plantation would not per se constitute a breach of the [sustainability criteria]. ”

Green groups were outraged by the move. “Palm oil plantations are one of the very worst examples of the problems with biofuels. The spirit of the debate in 2008 was specifically to stop this sort of thing,” Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth Europe told this website.

“If the commission and member states can’t even get it right when dealing with palm oil, it’s a pretty bad sign for biofuels as a whole. The palm oil industry has done a very good job lobbying over the last while.”
The Malaysian Palm Oil Council for the last two years employed GPlus, the international lobbying outfit, to press their case in both Brussels and national capitals, and brought a number of ministers to Europe to meet with their counterparts on a couple of occasions, according to the firm.

The Brussels office of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council refused to comment on the matter.

The commission for its part does not comment on leaked texts but a spokesperson remarked that the draft communication will only be adopted by the new commission college and the new energy chief may or may not approve of the work the outgoing commission has performed on the dossier.

Much of the communication, which was due to be published in March, has provoked disagreement between different departments of the EU’s civil service and so has been pushed up a level to commissioner cabinets.

(Source: EU Observer.com)

Wisdom was 53.

Wisdom first became involved with orangutan conservation in 1994, and established the SOS two years later. Although Sumatran orangutans account for just one-seventh of the total wild population, Wisdom once said her work became increasingly important when it was confirmed in 2000 that Sumatran orangutans and Bornean orangutans are two separate sub-species.

“Once the Sumatran orangutans are lost they are lost forever,” she told The Jakarta Post in 2009.

SOS has established the Sumatra Orangutan Society Lucy Wisdom Fund, which will help fund a scholarship for an Indonesian post-graduate to study orangutans, purchase land in Sumatra as a wildlife sanctuary, and other conservation measures. Those wishing to contribute should send donations to:

Lucy Wisdom Fund
Sumatran Orangutan Society UK,
The Old Music Hall,106-108 Cowley Road,
Oxford OX4 1JE
United Kingdom

(If you are a British tax payer then please write your name and address ( first line + postcode only) on the back of the cheque, and indicate that you are a UK taxpayer and wish this donation to qualify under “the Gift Aid scheme”. This means your donation will have an extra 25% added to it by the Gift Aid scheme fund.)

Those wishing to contribute by bank transfer should direct funds to:

Sumatran Orangutan Society
Cooperative Bank
Sort Code: 089299
Account number: 65163432

OC president Norm Rosen said the conservation community will miss Wisdom’s leadership.

“Lucy was a real strong conservationist and she spent years fighting the battle,” he said.

Wisom’s commitment earned her international recognition and a steady stream of honors, including the UK’s Women in Ethical Business Award in 2008.

SOS has grown from its humble roots to a staff of 15 Medan, North Sumatra, which oversees SOS’s many on-the-ground projects. These include orangutan guide training, community tree planting, community education, tree nurseries, rehabilitation of degraded forest zones, conservation scholarships, palm oil plantation tours into lands that were once prime forests and information dissemination on the plight of orangutans to the global community.

For more information, please visit the SOS website.

(Source: OC staff)

The land is tinted a sick gray. Some parts still smolder. Twisted hulks of tree trunks take on abnormal shapes. A dark black canal cuts perfectly through. It’s nearly impossible to imagine that this was once lush tropical rainforest.

In other parts as far as the eye can see, a sea of emerald green. But the rolling hills are not covered in natural forest — instead they’re covered in palm plantations.

Their emerald green color splashed across rolling hills give the impression that this is untouched nature. But the deafening silence inside the plantations are a clear indication that they are lifeless ecosystems, part of a global factory churning out one of the most in-demand products out there — palm oil.

In supermarkets across the world products containing palm oil regularly fly off the shelves — soaps, chocolates, margarine, cosmetics.

Most consumers have no idea that they contain palm oil which often hides behind the label of “vegetable oil” and even less of a clue that conservationists are singling it out as being one of the main driving forces behind deforestation.

Clearing forests for agriculture isn’t exactly new, but palm is quickly becoming the crop of choice.

It is fast growing with high yields — global demand now tops 40 million tonnes a year and is central to the economies of Malaysia and Indonesia.

But the rampant tearing down of Indonesia’s natural forests have made this tropical nation the world’s third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Already, 85 percent of Sumatra’s forests are gone and what is left is disappearing at an alarming rate.

“We are running out of time here, we are at the end of the tunnel,” Peter Pratje with the Frankfurt Zoological Society tells us at an orangutan sanctuary in the heart of Sumatra. Sumatran orangutans are expected to be the first great ape to become extinct — due to the loss of their natural habitat, just one of many species threatened because of unchecked deforestation.

“The problem is there is no second chance,” Pratje adds. “If you shut down an ecosystem that is hundreds of years old you can’t re-grow it any longer, so this is the last chance. If you don’t protect it, we can’t hope that later we can correct this error.”

It’s a reality that even the largest buyers and producers of palm oil acknowledge.
Consumer products giant Unilever spearheaded a movement towards sustainable palm oil cultivation the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) which gathered palm producers, manufacturers, and green groups to find a sustainable way to cultivate palm.

“If agriculture cannot be made sustainable then we as a food and home and personal care company are in trouble,” Jan Kees Vis, Unilever and RSPO president explains.

But critics like Greenpeace fault the RSPO’s standards for being too weak and say that they can’t control their members.

“What we are against is the deforestation and the peat land destruction,” Bustar Maitar, a Greenpeace activist tells us.

At the moment, only three to four percent of globally produced palm oil is certified by the RSPO. It’s a drop in the bucket now, but the RSPO expects the volume to double in the next year.

But that probably won’t be enough to save Sumatra’s forests or our environment. Conservationists say that its time for companies to control their desire for more money, governments to start seriously enforcing forest protection laws and individual consumers to take on responsibility and make lifestyle changes.

(Source: CNN)

“Orangutan Caring Week” was created by the Orang Utan Republik Foundation, and is designed to create a “critical mass of concerned voices” for the conservation of orangutans and their habitat. The theme for 2009 is “Planting Trees to Increase Future Habitat for the Orangutan.”  

The OC had an orangutan information and merchandise table at the Southern California Primate Research Forum, which occurred on Nov. 7 at Cal State University – Northridge (CSUN). The biannual event focuses primarily on field research, including topics about evolutionary biology, ecology, and behavior.  The CSUN topic was “New Directions in Studies of New World Monkeys.”

The OC also took part in “Orangutan Caring Week” by providing OC Shopping Guides to more than a dozen zoos to distribute to the general public as part of the information campaigns. The OC Shopping Guides identify “orangutan-friendly” items and manufacturers that do not use ingredients such as palm oil that harm the orangutan’s natural habitat.

For more information of Orangutan Caring Week, please visit the Orang Utan Republik Foundation website.

(Source: OC Staff)