Orangutan Conservancy

OC’s Dr. Raffaella Commitante and Outrop founder Dr. Mark Harrison reunite in Indonesia ahead of next week’s OC/OVAG Veterinary Workshop

By Dr. Raffaella Commitante for the Orangutan Conservancy

The adventure begins…..

I met with Dr Mark Harrison of the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project (OU Trop) upon my arrival in Jakarta. We talked about some new possibilities for continuing to work together which we will discuss further in the coming months. OU Trop is seeking to further their own collaboration with the local university in Palangkaraya and continue to establish a stronger presence in the area.

A few days later, I flew to Balikpapan from Jakarta to visit my friends at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation Center in Samboja. I have not visited here for two years and I was shocked at the degradation of the local forests surrounding the center. Is the destruction from the oil palm? No – coal mining. I could not believe how many new roads have been cut into the landscape to accommodate the large equipment needed to take out the trees and dig out the land. An area that was once still green (even with a few oil palm plantations) is now mostly naked soil. As we approach the rainy season, this will really show the damage. With no trees to hold the soil, flooding from the rains with mud will be a real problem. In talking with some local people, they have already realized the danger with some areas already becoming flooded – and it seems it will only get worse. It is very sad to witness. This was a small village and now it is a bustling coal mining town.

Later on today I will begin a 7-hour car journey to Sengatta (northeast of Balikpapan) for the Orangutan Conservation and Reforestation workshop that is being facilitated by Dr. Anne Russon (one of our board members and founder of the Orangutan Kutai Project in the Sengatta area) and the Balai Taman Nasional Kutai (Kutai National Park). More soon…..

Raffaella

Orangutan  Board member Dr. Raffaella Committante is in Indonesia this month to stage the fifth OC/OVAG Veterinary Workshop in Bogor. Our blog will feature several posts written by her this month as she heads for the workshop.

Palm oil seeds (AFP Photo/Sutanta Aditya)

by Linda Yulisman for the Jakarta Post

The visit by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess crude palm oil quality may have a positive outcome and could eventually boost exports to the US.

In January last year, the agency announced that Indonesian biodiesel produced from palm oil could only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent.

Palm oil biodiesel was then removed from the list of environmentally friendly commodities as it does not meet the 20 percent benchmark to qualify as “renewable” under the Renewable Fuel Standards.

Had palm oil diesel been included in the list, it would enjoy an import tariff reduction up to 5 percent.

This week’s visit is the second tour by the EPA to Indonesia following one last October when they surveyed an oil palm plantation in Riau and held talks with smallholders. They also met with the government and industry groups.

Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan said on Wednesday that the visit was crucial for the US agency as its findings should be announced by the end of July.

“We hope the agency will come up with a favorable result for us and this will help us to put palm oil on the environmental goods list with APEC [the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation],” he said.

EPA officials had collected information during their first visit in October but the data was not
followed up, apparently due to internal restructuring.

Two agriculture products — palm oil and rubber — are being pushed towards APEC’s list of environmentally-friendly commodities ahead of the APEC summit in Bali, in October.

This excerpt from a news article appeared in and is courtesy of the Jakarta Post.  To read the full article click here.

Caged orangutan at Limbat’s ‘zoo’ in Kandang, Aceh on the island of Sumatra. Photo by Paul Hilton.

Birchard Kellogg, special to mongabay.com

In a chilly rain on Sunday, in a town just a few kilometers beyond the edge of a protected Sumatran rainforest, a young orangutan sat perched on a piece of plywood and grabbed the metal wires of his tiny cage.

He has sat in that cage for six months and, like more than a dozen other species on display in this “zoo” in the town of Kandang in Aceh, he has a price tag.

This packed assembly is an acknowledged front for illegal trafficking in wildlife.

“It’s a zoo, but you can buy,” said the wife of the property’s owner. The critically endangered orangutan? $200. A leopard cat? $25-$50.

A steady rotation is evident. In March, a staff member of a Sumatran conservation organization working to fight the trade witnessed a critically endangered baby sun bear on the property. About a week later, two other bears sat caged, according to the same eyewitness. None are there now.

This excerpt from a news article appeared on and is courtesy of mongabay.com.  To read the entire article click here.

Harapan Rainforest photo courtesy of indonesien.um.dk

by Jon Afrizal for The Jakarta Post

Conservationist PT Restorasi Ekosistem Konservasi Indonesia (REKI) rejected a plan to build roads for coal trucks that would pass through the Harapan rainforest in Jambi, South Sumatra. It reasoned that the road construction could jeopardize the restoration program currently underway.

“The track construction will cause severance on lines used by animals in the forest,” REKI spokesperson Surya Kusuma said. He also said that another problem that might erupt was it would facilitate illegal logging and would threaten the existence of the Batin IX, local tribe who live within the forest.

He lamented that REKI was not involved in the plan.

“We were in shock when we got invited to attend a meeting with the Forestry Ministry in December 2012 to hear a presentation about the plan,” he said.

He said that REKI had written to the Forestry Minister twice about its rejection but received no response.

“It will raise question about the government’s commitment to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia.”

This story appeared in and is courtesy of The Jakarta Post.