Source: Copyright 2008, Agence France-Presse
Date: May 10, 2008
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=944bb22c-e485-44f3-9103-de0a5eddf587&k=96840/
One of the biggest populations of wild orangutans on Borneo
will be extinct in three years without drastic measures to
stop the expansion of palm oil plantations, conservationists
said Wednesday.
"For Central Kalimantan, the species will be gone as soon as
three years from now," Centre for Orangutan Protection
director Hardi Bhaktiantoro told a press conference.
More than 30,000 wild orangutans live in the forests of
Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province, or more than half the
entire orangutan population of Borneo island which is shared
between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
Experts believe the overall extinction rate of Borneo
orangutans is nine percent per year, but in Central Kalimantan
they are disappearing even faster due to unchecked expansion
of palm oil plantations.
"The expansion of palm oil plantations is wiping out entire
habitats and unless the government takes drastic measures to
protect these orangutan sanctuaries there is no way to reverse
the trend," Bhaktiantoro said.
He showed pictures taken in November of dead orangutans being
carried out of new plantations in Central Kalimantan, where
they are hunted as pests to prevent them eating palm
seedlings.
Orangutans are found only on Borneo/Kalimantan and Sumatra Island of Indonesia and they are listed
as endangered by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, the
paramount scientific authority on imperilled species.
It says numbers of the ape have fallen by well over 50 percent
in the past 60 years as a result of habitat loss, poaching and
the pet trade.
Indonesia has already lost 72 percent of its 123 million
hectares (304 million acres) of ancient rain forest due to
frenzied logging and burning of peatland for agriculture,
according to Greenpeace figures.
But the recent growth in demand for palm oil from food,
cosmetic and biofuel companies is putting more pressure on
orangutan habitats, swathes of which lie outside conversation
areas.
"The deforestation rate in the area (Central Kalimantan/Central Borneo),
especially for conversion to palm oil plantation is extremely
high," Bhaktiantoro said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was keen to trumpet his
government's efforts to save the orange apes as Indonesia
hosted the UN-sponsored world climate conference in December.
He used the occasion to unveil a scheme called the Orangutan
Action Plan designed to stabilise orangutan populations and
habitat by 2017 and promote sustainable forest management.
No comments:
Post a Comment