Action Alert: Oil Palm Threatens Indonesia's Rainforests and Orangutans

[Guest guest]

Please visit below and send the prepared letter with

your name and address.

 

http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=indonesia

 

Action Alert: Oil Palm Threatens Indonesia's

Rainforests and Orangutans

 

Chinese funded development a ploy to access rainforest

timbers, will devastate Borneo's biodiversity and

largest remaining wild orangutan population

 

By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet

- February 20, 2006

 

Indonesia plans to cut a 2,000 kilometer long, five

kilometer wide swathe through one of the world's

largest remaining areas of pristine rainforest to

create a massive oil palm plantation. The project

would destroy two million hectares of ancient

rainforest in West and East Kalimantan, traversing

almost the entire border with Malaysia, and slicing

through three national parks. These remote rainforests

on the island of Borneo are home to countless species

of rare birds, plants and mammals including the

largest remaining wild orangutan population.

 

This Chinese-funded " agricultural development " is

almost certainly a thinly veiled ruse to access

timber. Several studies have found the region is too

mountainous to support effective palm oil farming, and

is economically unviable as it would cost the country

billions of dollars a year. In the past many supposed

oil palm developers have abandoned projects after

completing rainforest clearance. Indonesia has huge

land areas of abandoned, unproductive palm oil

plantations and degraded forest areas that would be

suitable for oil palm development.

 

The project would be environmentally devastating to

Borneo, a hotspot for biodiversity. Palm oil

plantations - which completely clear the rainforests

and are biologically depauperate - are the number one

enemy of orangutans and all wildlife in Borneo.

Orangutans need vast areas of interconnected forest to

survive, and this ill-conceived project would speed up

their extinction. According to Friends of the Earth,

the business as usual palm oil trade will cause the

extinction of the orangutan within 12 years. Further,

these rainforests encompass over half of Borneo's

watersheds, and their clearing would damage clean

water sources for much of Indonesian Borneo.

 

Indonesia is already losing two million hectares of

rainforest every year. It is vital to Indonesia and

the World's ecological sustainability that no more

ancient primary rainforests are cleared for oil palm.

Let the Indonesian President know he must cancel the

Kalimantan project, and that new oil palm plantations

should be built only in previously cleared and unused

areas. Note your protest emails are going to nine

email addresses, please inform us if some start to

bounce as the campaign progresses.