Orangutan from Non-conserved Forests Can Only Survive Three Years
Monday, 08 September, 2008 | 16:08 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:During the next three years, more than 8,000 orangutans face the treat of extinction as palm oil industries are refusing moratorium or spaces when opening up land.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace considers this as one effective way to protect orangutans that live outside protected forests.

Novi Hardianto, manager of the habitat program at the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) said on Thursday last week (4/9) that two big palm oil companies, IOI Group and Agro Group, have cut down forests that were known to be the habitat of orangutan.

This was despite the fact that these forests were included in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Novi said that this proves RSPO cannot protect the orangutan population.

“The population has been reduced by 3,000 per year. If we cannot improve this, we will not see orangutan anymore in the three years’ time,” she said.

Edi Suhardi, the public relations manager at Agro Group, denied this.

“It is not true that we have cut the forest there,” he said.

“We just started our preliminary study to identify areas with high conservation,” said Edi.

Meanwhile, RSPO spokesperson Desi Kusmadewi said that RSPO would check out the area mentioned by Greenpeace.

“If it is true, we will give chance for the company to repair what they have done first before being removed from RSPO,” said Desi.

Tonny R. Soehartono, Director for conservation and biological varieties at the Forestry Department, said the reduction of the orangutan and perhaps other species was normal.

Government has decided the areas for fauna and the areas for cultivation.

“We cannot make all forests only for wild animals,” said Tonny.

He went on to say that the number of orangutan in Indonesia is still 60,000.

“This is more than the number of Sumatran tigers,” said Tonny.

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