MIAMI – 29 December 2007 – Nonja, a 55-year-old Sumatran orangutan, was found dead by her keeper Saturday morning at the Metrozoo.

Nonja was believed to be the world’s oldest Sumatran Orangutan and was well-known by zoo visitors. Each June, the zoo hosted a huge bash to celebrate her birthday.

Zoo officials said she had begun to show signs of age, but was not sick. A necropsy will be performed to determine her cause of death.

Nonja, which means “girl” in Dutch, came to Metrozoo in October 1983 from the Wassenar Zoo in Holland.

She was born in the wild in Sumatra in June 1952. She gave birth to five babies, who in turn produced at least two other offspring in captivity.

“Metrozoo is proud to have provided Nonja with a home that allowed her to live such a long a prosperous life. She will be missed,” zoo officials said in a statement.

Source: http://www.nbc6.net/news/14944902/detail.html?rss=ami&psp=news

**********MIAMI — A 55-year-old Sumatran orangutan, believed to be the world’s oldest, died Saturday, according to a Miami zoo spokesman.Nonja, who was born on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and has lived in Miami since 1983, was found dead Saturday morning, said Ron Magill, spokesman for the Miami Metro Zoo.”Everybody’s very sad, especially with an animal like an orangutan,” Magill said. “You see a lot of yourself in these animals. The great apes are our closest relatives.”

A necropsy is to be performed in the next few days. A typical life span for Sumatran orangutans is 40 to 50 years, Magill said.

Nonja had slowed down in recent years because of her age, Mcgill added, but “wasn’t geriatric by any means.”

The primate matriarch held her own very well, Magill said, “sometimes against orangutans twice her size.”

“She was really a grand old dame,” Magill said. “She really was.

Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071229/APN/712290862

**********

Necropsy results show a 55-year-old Sumatran orangutan, believed to be the world’s oldest, choked to death.

A Miami Metro Zoo spokesman says Nonja suffered a brain hemorrhage that made her pass out and vomit. She choked on her vomit and was found dead Saturday.

Nonja was born on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and has lived in Miami since 1983. Despite her age, Nonja was in good health.

A typical life span for Sumatran orangutans is 40 to 50 years.

Further testing will determine what caused the brain hemorrhage.

The results could take two weeks.

http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=b499fa9e-619e-4175-b4fb-c69d9ce41233&rss=762

The future of orangutans rests on the shoulders of SN&R’s Primate of the Year

Photo & Story By Nicholas Miller

Blankets rather than palm leaves dangle from branches, cardboard shipping boxes that once held yams are littered about, the sun creeps into the sky and Urban plants himself firmly at the base of a giant tree, back to the world. His long, persimmon-colored dreadlocks flare wildly—bad case of morning hair?—a bald spot on his lower back, a lone sign that now, at 26 years, he’s middle aged. But Urban’s still a smooth fella—even calculating, inspecting the morning’s offerings of wild oats and hay with a boss-of-it-all nonchalance.

“People ask, ‘Why don’t you comb him? Why don’t you bathe him?’” says Leslie Field, the Sacramento Zoo’s lead keeper and supervisor, of the orangutan’s gnarly dreads. “Not, if you’re an orang. That is ‘orang pretty.’”

But good looks have only gotten Urban so far. Although he’s in his prime—mature cheek flanges a signal to females that he’s full-grown and ready for some action—he can’t get any ladies knocked up.

“We’ve had many females here for him but none conceived,” Leslie explains. A management group that oversees orangutan breeding is hot on Urban, who’s the only surviving offspring of his father. Urban’s got exceptional, top-percentile genes, but it’s what’s in his so-called jeans that might not be up to snuff. “He actually likes Ginger, who’s menopausal,” Leslie jokes of Urban’s roomie, a 52-year-old female who’s bathing in the sunlight atop the tree canopy.

It’s not that he has no game or is fugly. “When the girls start to fight, he sort of puts one hand on one and one hand on the other and forces them apart,” Leslie says. “He looks very tired at the end of the day.” Perhaps Urban’s just down and out, on a losing streak.

“We’ve recently just had a series of females. We don’t know what the answer is—if it’s really Urban or if it’s the girls,” she continues. “It seems to be that the females Urban likes aren’t very cyclic in nature, which is not very conducive to breeding.”

But at 26, Urban needs to lay off the older broads (you cougar bait) and start chasing younger, more fertile skirt. Fortunately, he’s got another 25 years to go at it, and as Leslie notes, “He can breed pretty much until he dies.”

In the meantime, let a player play, right?

Maybe, but it’s really no joking matter: Orangutans are very endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources estimates that 7,000 Sumatran orangs, like Urban, remain in the wild. Their future is bleak: United Nations scientists believe that deforestation could wipe out Urban’s kin by 2012. And survival ain’t easy: poachers, loggers, miners, forest fires—enemies are manifold. Needless to say, Urban’s got the weight of the orang world on his shoulders.

And then there’s his greatest enemy: palm oil.

“A lot of products we buy include palm oil as an additive,” Leslie explains. Your breakfast at the greasy-spoon, afternoon snack, popcorn at the movies—pretty much any preservative-filled food thrown down your gullet contains palm oil. At first, industry opened palm-oil plantations in Sumatra with the best of intentions, namely to harvest an alternative biofuel. Years later, the results have been an ecological nightmare: the rain forest being pillaged at an unprecedented rate; Indonesia, where most palm oil is harvested, has become the third-largest contributor to global warming (after the United States and China). For a born-and-raised Sacramentan like Urban, that’s heavy.

No pressure, buddy—you’re only one of the most important primates on the entire planet.

Urban came into this world on February 18, 1981, the second child to parents Josephine and Baldy, who lived at the Sacramento Zoo for over 40 years. His father passed away in the mid-’90s; his mother now lives at the San Diego Zoo, where she has been a surrogate for three babies. Urban’s lived in Sacramento all his life.

“Twenty-six years later, he’s this giant, gorgeous orang,” Leslie praises, noting that not only are his genes superb, but his physique also is tops, especially his impressive 8-foot-10-inch wingspan. He’s a dominant alpha-male, but on the flip side is surprisingly calm—even reclusive, unhurried. “Orangs, because they’re semi-solitary, their whole behavior is a quieter persona,” Leslie says, and she’s right: Even though Urban is more than 10-times stronger than humans, he moves with a grace and agility unexpected of a 300-plus-pound powerhouse.

“If you make a mistake on a door or a lock, they will make note of that right away,” and orangs have been known to store pins in their cheeks and pick locks. But trainers are never face-to-face with the animals. “Even though they are born in captivity, they are wild. You don’t get a grace period.”

But Urban’s also got a soft side. When his morning treat, or “enrichment,” is tossed from the rocks above, he scampers to it, unfurling a sheet of brown paper covered with jam, which he gently licks.

And then there’s Urban’s idiosyncratic daily vitamin routine: He drinks juice in a Dixie cup then puts vitamins inside, squishes the bottom, and then he licks the cup clean. He’s distinctive, but will Urban’s finesse translate to the bedroom? The world, and everyone at the zoo, is watching.

Of course, today he’s too busy tooling around with his pile of oat hay, hording a stash away from his female roomies. He has with him the yams’ box, hiding his head in it while covering himself with a blanket. Too early to worry about procreation.

“People say ‘Look at those dumb animals. They just sit there,’” Leslie says. “After working with them all these years, they are one of the smartest creatures on this planet.

“Smarter than some people I know.”

For getting more action than the average scenester, takin’ it real easy and being the last hope for the orangutan species, Urban is SN&R’s Primate of the Year.

Source: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=608479

Industry’s Woes Endanger EU Goal For Using Fossil-Fuel Alternatives

Source: Copyright 2007, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119871178911851507.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Date: December 27, 2007
Byline: John W. Miller

The European Union’s dream of using vegetable-based diesel fuel in cars to cut oil imports and the pollution that causes global warming is turning sour.

The bloc made a big bet on biodiesel fuels in 2003, agreeing that its governments would phase in tax breaks and rules to encourage their production and use.

The bet seemed to make sense. Most Europeans drive diesel cars, making ethanol — the U.S. clean fuel of choice for gasoline-powered cars — impractical. Biodiesel can be mixed with regular diesel fuel and, when blended, doesn’t need any special pumps or engine-design changes.

Mirroring the U.S. experience with ethanol, European companies rushed to make biodiesel out of a range of things, including rapeseed crops and used McDonald’s frying oil. Low raw-material costs and generous tax breaks meant margins were high. By last year, Europe’s annual capacity to make the fuel had climbed to 10 million metric tons from two million tons in 2003.

As with ethanol in the U.S., though, Europe now has a glut of biodiesel. The world consumed only nine million tons of biodiesel last year. Europe’s producers found buyers for just five million tons. The industry is in trouble, under pressure from soaring costs, disappearing tax breaks, less-costly imports and waning public support.

The trend is at odds with conventional wisdom that rising oil prices make green energy more attractive. It also means the EU risks missing the goal it set in 2003 of replacing 10% of transportation fuel with nonfossil fuels by 2020.

The 27-nation bloc, which claims to lead the world in cutting the carbon-dioxide emissions believed to cause global warming, uses nonfossil fuels for less than 2% of transportation fuel consumed.

Since January, prices for the crops that make most biodiesel have doubled, driving the cost of a ton of biodiesel up 50%, to around $1,440 a ton, or about $4.80 a gallon. Prices for regular crude-oil-based diesel have risen sharply, too, but only to $840 a ton, or $2.80 a gallon. Biodiesel has become more expensive for oil companies to buy than fossil fuel, and they are cutting back.

Green lobbies are also turning against biodiesel. They now say that growing crops for biodiesel puts too much pressure on land and food prices. In Europe, 80% of biodiesel is made from rapeseed, a distinctive, yellow-flowered crop. Environmental groups also oppose imported palm-oil-based biodiesel from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, saying the rush to grow more oil palm trees is causing deforestation.

The combination of problems has hit producers hard. Petrotec AG, based here in Borken, Germany, makes biodiesel out of used cooking oil from McDonald’s, Burger King and other restaurants. After going public last year, its market capitalization quickly climbed to €200 million ($288 million). But when the German government canceled a biodiesel tax credit in August 2006, Petrotec’s share price halved, and the company shed workers.

“How are we meant to invent and develop new technology if we can’t make money?” asks Petrotec Chief Executive Roger Boeing, who started the firm in 1998. He helped pioneer a technology for converting recycled oil into biodiesel, but it still isn’t efficient enough to make biodiesel less expensive than normal diesel.

A prominent British company, Biofuels Corp., avoided a bankruptcy situation this year after Barclays Bank agreed to swap some of its debt outstanding for 94% of the equity in the company. The company blamed high commodity prices and biodiesel imports from the U.S. for its woes.

U.S. biodiesel producers enjoy a big tax credit from the federal government. This month, Congress voted to extend the tax credit until the end of 2010. EU producers recently asked the EU to impose punitive tariffs on biodiesel imports from the U.S., citing the subsidies as unfair competition. U.S. producers dispute the claim.

“We’re still working on a big technological breakthrough to bring costs down,” says Bruno Reyntjens, a manager at Proviron, a Belgian company that makes biodiesel out of rapeseed and soybeans.

Scientists say it is likely to be at least 2010 before any breakthrough is made on costs, or on producing a biodiesel than can run in regular diesel engines effectively at a much higher blend than the current standard of 5% per gallon of diesel sold at the pump.

Europe’s governments are finding it difficult to adjust policy to a new and volatile market. In 2006, when commodity prices were low and margins were fat, Germany decided to trim the tax breaks it offers to biodiesel producers. Earlier this year, France raised taxes on biodiesel. Now that producers are in trouble, governments aren’t giving the tax breaks back.

“It’s public finances versus agriculture, and governments need money,” says Kevin McGeeney, chief executive of Switzerland-based Starsupply Renewables SA, a biofuels broker. Ten EU countries, including the United Kingdom, have delayed measures to force oil companies to blend biodiesel with their regular fuel.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency has urged EU governments to cut back further on incentives to develop biofuels, saying they are too expensive.

Peter Mandelson, the EU’s top trade negotiator, says the problem isn’t the use of biodiesel, but producing it in crowded, high-cost Europe. “Europe should be open to accepting that we will import a large part of our biofuel resources,” Mr. Mandelson said in a speech this summer.

U.S. ethanol producers are facing some similar problems. Buoyed by $7 billion a year in subsidies and a tariff on foreign imports, U.S. farmers planted a quarter more corn this year, most of it going toward making ethanol. But supply of ethanol is outstripping demand, mainly because of the difficulty and cost of transporting ethanol, which needs special pipelines. Some U.S. ethanol producers are idling production and a debate has begun over whether the pressure that ethanol production puts on agricultural land is worth the modest cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions it yields.

December 24, 2007

PORTSMOUTH The saying “laugh and the world laughs with you” may apply to animals as well as humans.

A study conducted by the University of Portsmouth and the Veterinary University in Hannover, found that contagious laughter, thought to be a human trait, broke out among orangutans when playing.

They studied how 25 orangutans, aged between two and twelve, reacted to different facial expressions pulled by their playmates.

Often, where one primate displayed an open, gaping mouth, the other animal started “laughing” in less than half a second, suggesting an involuntary reaction.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3090382.ece

This piece comes from China Confidential– an exceptional blog that we highly recommend you look at.

Palm Plantations Will Release 30 Times More Carbon Than Petroleum

22 December 2007 – The devastation from palm-based biodiesel–also known as deforestation diesel or rainforest diesel–has again been confirmed. EU Research reports new data shows that massive amounts of carbon dioxide are being released from tropical Southeast Asian peatland after the conversion of natural swamp forest to oil palm or pulpwood tree plantations.

The findings are in accordance with other recent reports on the growing negative environmental impacts of planting palm oil and pulpwood forests.

When peatland is deforested and then left bare and unmanaged the denuded land is susceptible to both fire and flooding.

Destroying Forests to Fuel Cars

Natural peatland accumulates huge stores of carbon dioxide as a result of centuries of tree growth. When this land is deforested to grow oil palms and pulpwood, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere thereby contributing to climate change. Even worse, when peatland is deforested and then left bare and unmanaged, the denuded land is susceptible to both fire and flooding. Tropical peatlands are not only rich repositories of vegetation and an important part of the global carbon cycle, they are also extremely important for biodiversity as they contain many rare species of animals and fish including orang utans, Sumatran tigers and blackwater fish.

Peat swamp forest is the only land in Southeast Asia that is not yet fully developed but the increasing demand for pulp and palm oil for biofuels is accelerating their conversion into plantations. Oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia now cover 420,000 hectares and 2,800,000 hectares respectively. Ironically, many experts believe that the oil palm plantations will release up to 30 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels that they are supposed to replace. It has been estimated that producing 1 tonne of palm oil will cause carbon dioxide emissions of between 15 and 70 tonnes over each 25-year planting lifecycle due to forest clearance, fires drainage and peat decomposition.

Climate Change in the Name of Clean Energy

Climate change has been focused up to now on greenhouse gases emitted by large industrial plants; but attention is now starting to be focused on carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. Dr Susan Page from the University of Leicester in the UK is working on two EU-funded projects: CARBOPEAT and RESTORPEAT. Both have been designed to raise awareness of climate change. She says: “Current land use and land practice developments in Southeast Asia give grave cause for concern. Deforestation of peatlands has been rising for the last 20 years. In 2005, 25 percent of all deforestation in Southeast Asia was on peatlands owing to demand for land on which to establish plantations.”

The CARBOPEAT and RESTORPEAT projects involve partners from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Holland, Finland and the UK. The partners are conducting research in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia on how tropical peat swamp forest could be used more productively to create sustainable and environmentally friendly livelihoods for local communities.

Source: http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/2007/12/deforestation-diesel-data-palm.html

Natural peatland accumulates huge stores of carbon dioxide as a result of centuries of tree growth. When this land is deforested to grow oil palms and pulpwood, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere thereby contributing to climate change. Even worse, when peatland is deforested and then left bare and unmanaged, the denuded land is susceptible to both fire and flooding. Tropical peatlands are not only rich repositories of vegetation and an important part of the global carbon cycle, they are also extremely important for biodiversity as they contain many rare species of animals and fish including orang utans, Sumatran tigers and blackwater fish.

Peat swamp forest is the only land in Southeast Asia that is not yet fully developed but the increasing demand for pulp and palm oil for biofuels is accelerating their conversion into plantations. Oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia now cover 420 000 ha and 2 800 000 ha respectively. Ironically, many experts believe that the oil palm plantations will release up to 30 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels that they are supposed to replace. It has been estimated that producing 1 tonne of palm oil will cause carbon dioxide emissions of between 15 and 70 tonnes over each 25-year planting lifecycle due to forest clearance, fires drainage and peat decomposition.

Climate change has been focused up to now on greenhouse gases emitted by large industrial plants, but attention is now starting to be focused on carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. Dr Susan Page from the University of Leicester in the UK is working on two EU-funded projects: CARBOPEAT and RESTORPEAT. Both have been designed to raise awareness of climate change. She says: ‘Current land use and land practice developments in Southeast Asia give grave cause for concern. Deforestation of peatlands has been rising for the last 20 years. In 2005, 25 percent of all deforestation in Southeast Asia was on peatlands owing to demand for land on which to establish plantations.’

The CARBOPEAT and RESTORPEAT projects involve partners from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Holland, Finland and the UK. The partners are conducting research in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia on how tropical peat swamp forest could be used more productively to create sustainable and environmentally friendly livelihoods for local communities.

A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference on climate change was held on 4-14 December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, to allow delegates to discuss proposals to regulate international requirements for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/

Oil palm plantation companies of the Wilmar group: the gap between policy and practice

Authors: A. Zakaria; C. Theile; L. Khaimur
Publisher: Friends of the Earth International , 2007

This report presents a review of the environmental, social and legal policies and actual practices of three oil palm plantation companies related to the Wilmar Group, a large corporate conglomerate with its origins in Indonesia.

The main finding of the report is that current plantation development practices of Wilmar’s subsidiaries in Sambas District in West Kalimantan are in conflict with:

* the public corporate social responsibility policies of the Wilmar group
* Indonesia’s legislation
* the principles and criteria of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil.

The authors highlight that this gap between policy and practice leads to environmental damage and social unrest and undermines good governance of the palm oil sector.

Recommendations to Wilmar and its stakeholders include:

* Wilmar’s management should halt all new nursery, land clearing and plantation development until the relevant legal authorities have issued approval of the environmental impact assessment reports
* Wilmar should continue to pay salaries to permanent workers of PT Wilmar Sambas Plantation and PT Buluh Cawang Plantation to bridge the period of time until all relevant legal requirements are met

Download the full report

Source:
Eldis – Sharing the best in development policy, practice and research
http://www.eldis.org/go/display&type=Document&id=34810