Orangutan Outreach Website - Saving the Orangutan

Deep Creek Elementary student leads April 25 fund-raiser for Oregon Zoo orangutans

PORTLAND, Ore. — Johanna Hampton is a petite 8-year-old with a huge passion for orangutans. When she accompanied her father, a Metro employee, to his holiday party at the Oregon Zoo last December, she was drawn to a tabletop display seeking to raise funds for the zoo’s new orangutan exhibit, Red Ape Reserve. Inspired by her Damascus school’s just-completed fund-raiser for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, Johanna wondered why she couldn’t raise funds to help the orangs get a new home.

“She thought the orangutan habitat expansion was a great idea,” said her father, Matthew Hampton. “I told her to ask the principal, and he directed her to the student council.”

Johanna put together a PowerPoint presentation for Deep Creek Elementary’s student council, proposing a “Family Movie Night” that would include a donated movie and food. She made her pitch, and her project received the council’s approval — and cooperation.

“I think it’s pretty neat that it’s the kids who are pushing this forward,” Hampton said.

The students have secured donations of organic fruits and vegetables from Organically Grown Co. and DiGiorno pizzas from Kraft Foods for the fund-raiser.

According to Jeff Hays, principal of Deep Creek, Johanna’s project has provided a focus for the school’s Earth Day celebration.

“The student council was inspired by Johanna’s project and immediately thought it would tie into Earth Day,” said Hays. “As a Premier Green School, our students are well educated in waste reduction, and energy and water conservation, so her orangutan project helps them to branch out and think globally.”

Endangered species will be the feature of the school’s Earth Day special assembly, Wednesday, April 16, at 12:40 p.m., with Oregon Zoo primate keepers Dave Thomas and Renee Cressa appearing as special guests. Thomas and Cressa will discuss the plight of orangutans in the wild and give students a peek at a model of the zoo’s new orangutan exhibit.

Family Movie Night will be held at the school, 15600 SE 232nd Dr., in Damascus, on Friday, April 25, at 6 p.m. Entrance fee is by donation. Proceeds benefit the zoo’s Red Ape Reserve exhibit.

According to Hampton, some of his daughter’s enthusiasm has been fueled by the Animal Planet series “Orangutan Island,” which documents the lives of several dozen orphaned orangutans at the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Borneo. Johanna, determined to visit Borneo, has been exchanging e-mails with Richard Zimmerman, director of Orangutan Outreach, a nonprofit dedicated to orangutan conservation. The organization has donated a copy of the BBC documentary “Orangutan Diaries” for the Family Movie Night fund-raiser.

Orangutan Outreach is the U.S. affiliate of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, the Indonesian nonprofit that runs Nyaru Menteng. To learn more about Orangutan Outreach and its efforts to protect wild orangutans, visit http://redapes.org.

Source: http://www.oregonzoo.org/Newsroom/2008releases/2008Mar.htm#johanna

April 15, 2008
A global map for figuring out where to grow biofuel crops
By Michael Kanellos

Indonesia is probably the worst place in the world to grow biofuel crops, according to David Lobell, who is part of a project to determine good and bad places in the world to grow fuel crops.

“There are meters and meters of carbon in tropical peat lands,” said Lobell, a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute on the Stanford University campus. Cutting down these old tropical forests for agricultural land would release a massive amount of carbon into the atmosphere. Conceivably, it could take a few hundred years of biofuel consumption to displace the carbon released in land clearance.

“Pretty much everywhere is better,” he said.

The three-year project goes to the heart of the pressing food versus fuel debate. The U.S., Brazil, and some European nations are trying to encourage drivers to switch to biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel that emit fewer greenhouse gases. Those fuels right now, however, are typically made from food crops like corn, sugar, and soybeans, and converting food into gas is contributing to rising food prices. Other factors–rising food consumption in China, droughts, crop diseases–are contributing to the problem, too, but experts say biofuel production has definitely exacerbated the situation.

Food riots continue to rage in Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon, and other emerging nations. The International Monetary fund earlier this week encouraged developed nations to put together programs that could help alleviate the situation and warned that further famine and poverty could occur if nothing is accomplished.

Ideally, biofuels could be grown out of non-food crops on land that’s not as suitable or productive as farmland and won’t release much carbon into the atmosphere when cultivation begins.

Is anywhere good? Semi-arid areas of India could work well, Lobell said. Jatropha, an oily seed that isn’t fit for human consumption, grows in those regions and can be converted into diesel.

There is also a good possibility of growing fuel crops in CRP, or Conservation Reserve Program, lands in the U.S. These are the acres that the federal government pays farmers not to cultivate. Unfortunately, the amount of CRP land is actually somewhat small from a global perspective and might have only a marginal effect on fuel supplies.

While the project will go on for three years, Lobell says some preliminary data may emerge this fall.

Source: http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9919354-54.html?tag=bl

Over the last 12 months the European Commission has been investigating the potential to introduce EU-wide legislation designed to prevent imports of illegal wood. To guide policy development on the issue a wide-ranging public consultation exercise was held during 2007 and an independently-commissioned impact assessment was
completed earlier this year. This process has indicated that there is a very high level of support for such legislation from EU regulators, environmental groups and the timber industry throughout the EU. The governments of countries currently engaged in negotiating Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) with the EU (Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cameroon) also seem supportive since this would boost market prospects for timber licensed as legal under the terms of the VPA. An EC Communication containing a recommendation for EU-wide legislation is expected to be issued within the next few weeks.

While there is underlying support for such legislation, agreeing on the details of a workable framework is proving to be much more complicated. Essentially two options for legislation have been considered, each with very different implications for the European import trade:

• An import-ban or sales-ban on timber that is not verified as legal;
• Legislation styled on the US Lacey Act, making the import/sale of illegally-sourced timber illegal within the EU.

The first option essentially places the burden of proof on timber suppliers, requiring them to demonstrate that all wood is legal. This option would give a strong boost to FLEGT VPA licensed timber. It tends to be favored by environmental groups who argue that such legislation would be easier to enforce than a ‘Lacey-style’ approach.
However there are some significant legal and practical objections to this type of legislation. It would effectively criminalize within the EU any timber that is not verified as legal. Best estimates suggest that perhaps 10% of global industrial roundwood supply derives from illegal sources, so legislation requiring that all wood must be verified as legal seems disproportionate to the scale of the problem.

Such legislation reverses the usual burden of proof (timber traders are guilty unless they can prove their innocence), which is something that European courts are only rarely willing to do. Such legislation would also be difficult to apply to countries with large numbers of small owners (which makes traceability difficult), such as the US. There is also the problem that, in order to meet WTO obligations, the EU would have to place a similar burden on timber producers within the EU. For all these reasons, this option is not particularly favored by the EU private sector.

The alternative ‘Lacey-style’ approach places the burden of proof on the prosecution that would have to demonstrate that wood is from an illegal source. Again there are legal objections. Such legislation would require EU courts to make ‘extra-territorial’ judgements on the laws of other countries, something which they are only rarely willing to do. And the challenges of establishing a chain of evidence and bringing prosecutions would be considerable. On the other hand, this approach has the benefit of imposing a reduced burden on the private sector and would better target high risk imports. It would have the effect of encouraging due diligence on the part of
importers in order to reduce their risk of prosecution.

Due to the difficulties associated with both legislative options, the European Commission has signaled that the forthcoming Communication may actually recommend a third legislative option. There is talk of a law that would directly impose a requirement for due diligence on EU importers. Timber importing companies above a certain
size may be required to demonstrate that they have taken effective precautions to minimize the risk of purchasing wood from illegal sources. Another possibility is that the EU might simply impose new import declaration requirements to ensure more accurate reporting of country of harvesting.

Whatever the outcome, there is little doubt that the EC and many EU Member States are increasingly determined to implement effective measures to prevent imports of illegal wood. The deliberations on additional legislative options have potential to profoundly impact on the long-term future of the EU wood import trade.

Source: International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)

Posted to Understory– the official blog of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) by Debra in Rainforest Agribusiness on April 17th, 2008.
Read the original post here

I just arrived in Kuching, Malaysia, after 20 grueling hours of travel from San Francisco. I’m here to take part in a fact finding mission organised by Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA), Tenaganita, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) and Pesticide Action Network Asia-Pacific (PAN AP). Over the next week, we’ll be visiting communities threatened by proposed palm oil plantations to learn more about what’s happening and find out what we can do to help. We’ll also meet with Malaysian advocacy groups and hold a couple of press conferences to call attention to the threats posed by palm oil expansion.

During my trip, I had lots of time to do some background reading. Here’s what I found out:

* Between 1990 and 2000, Malaysia lost an average of 78,500 hectares of forest per year. Between 2000 and 2005, the rate of forest destruction increased by 85.1%. The rapid increase in deforestation comes largely due to the expansion of oil palm plantations as that commodity has become a popular agrofuel (industrial-scale biofuel) option. Currently, Malaysia supplies about half of the world’s palm oil.

* Malaysia is one of the world’s leading carbon emitters – not because they’re a major industrial power, but because the rapid rate of deforestation is releasing all of the carbon that those forests had captured for centuries.

* The state of Sarawak is the largest state in the Malaysian federation located on the island of Borneo. Of the 2.2 million people in Sarawak, 60% belong to Indigenous groups collectively known as the Dayak people, who have settled in the area for centuries.

* The way that land rights work in Malaysia, Indigenous groups must prove that they have used the land continuously since 1958 in order to establish their right to the land. In addition to the problem of “proving” continuous use without official documentation, the Indigenous communities face the added challenge that their sustainable farming practices of leaving fields fallow for several years means that they often haven’t “continuously” used any particular patch of land. With the current interpretation of the land rights law, the state government has stopped approving applications for Communal Reserves and has granted 60 – 90 year leases and concessions known as Provisional Leases to logging and plantation companies; usually closely related to people in the governing elite; to exploit previously recognized Indigenous lands for logging and subsequent replanting with oil palm.

* The Dayak people won a victory last year when the Federal Court in Kuala Lumpur (the highest court in Malaysia) recognized the pre-existence of native customary rights over land before any statute or legislation. Despite the Federal Court decision, the state government continues to grant Provisional Leases to logging and plantation companies.

* Plantations are increasingly coming into conflict with Dayak communities, having been accused of desecrating graves, destroying cultural artifacts, stealing timber from communal forest reserves, and other transgressions.

* Native communities and leaders who act to protect their land rights are persecuted, arrested and imprisoned to try to get them to give up their claims to the land. The industry also sends thugs to industry to harass the local community.

Tomorrow, our delegation will head out to some of these threatened communities and find out more about what’s going on. I’ll try to post an update when we get back to Kuching on Tuesday. In the meantime, you can find out more about these issues and take action to support a moratorium on agrofuels at http://ran.org/campaigns/rainforest_agribusiness/.

Source: http://understory.ran.org/2008/04/17/on-a-mission-to-expose-the-human-costs-of-palm-oil/

Ye tanother reason why we have to save the forests of Borneo!! ~ Rich

17 Apr 2008

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia: The Borneo pygmy elephant may not be native to Borneo after all. Instead, the population could be the last survivors of the Javan elephant race – accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago, a new publication suggests.

The origins of the pygmy elephants, found in a range extending from the north-east of the island into the Heart of Borneo, have long been shrouded in mystery. Their looks and behaviour differ from other Asian elephants and scientists have questioned why they never dispersed to other parts of the island.

But a new paper published today supports a long-held local belief that the elephants were brought to Borneo centuries ago by the Sultan of Sulu, now in the Philippines, and later abandoned in the jungle. The Sulu elephants, in turn, are thought to have originated in Java.

Javan elephants became extinct some time in the period after Europeans arrived in South-East Asia. Elephants on Sulu, never considered native to the island, were hunted out in the 1800s.

“Elephants were shipped from place to place across Asia many hundreds of years ago, usually as gifts between rulers,” said Mr Shim Phyau Soon, a retired Malaysian forester whose ideas on the origins of the elephants partly inspired the current research. “It’s exciting to consider that the forest-dwelling Borneo elephants may be the last vestiges of a subspecies that went extinct on its native Java Island, in Indonesia, centuries ago.”

If the Borneo pygmy elephants are in fact elephants from Java, an island more than 1,200 km (800 miles) south of their current range, it could be the first known elephant translocation in history that has survived to modern times, providing scientists with critical data from a centuries-long experiment.

Scientists solved part of the mystery in 2003, when DNA testing by Columbia University and WWF ruled out the possibility that the Borneo elephants were from Sumatra or mainland Asia, where the other Asian subspecies are found, leaving either Borneo or Java as the most probable source.

The new paper, “Origins of the Elephants Elephas Maximus L. of Borneo,” published in this month’s Sarawak Museum Journal shows that there is no archaeological evidence of a long-term elephant presence on Borneo.

“Just one fertile female and one fertile male elephant, if left undisturbed in enough good habitat, could in theory end up as a population of 2,000 elephants within less than 300 years,” said Junaidi Payne of WWF, one of the paper’s co-authors. “And that may be what happened in practice here.”

There are perhaps just 1,000 of the elephants in the wild, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah. WWF satellite tracking has shown they prefer the same lowland habitat that is being increasingly cleared for timber rubber and palm oil plantations. Their possible origins in Java make them even more a conservation priority.

“If they came from Java, this fascinating story demonstrates the value of efforts to save even small populations of certain species, often thought to be doomed,” said Dr Christy Williams, coordinator of WWF’s Asian elephant and rhino programme. “It gives us the courage to propose such undertakings with the small remaining populations of critically endangered Sumatran rhinos and Javan rhinos, by translocating a
few to better habitats to increase their numbers. It has worked for Africa’s southern white rhinos and Indian rhinos, and now we have seen it may have worked for the Javan elephant, too.”

VIsit the source of this article to see photos and learn more:
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/index.cfm?uNewsID=131101

Rhett Butler
April 17, 2008
View the original post on mongabay.com

Seeking to differentiate its palm oil from that produced less responsibly in other countries, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) sponsored a three-day meeting this week in Kota Kinabalu, on the island of Borneo.

The International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference (IPOSC) aimed to promote the virtues of palm oil and address environmental concerns that many green groups say plague the industry.

“Sustainability is the single most important challenge or threat as one chooses to see it,” said Dato’ Seri Lee Oi Hian, chairman of MPOC. “This is the reason that the MPOC has launched the IPOSC.”

“Sustainable palm oil is now a business requirement, which no company can overlook,” he continued. “The IPOSC reflects on the environmental and sustainabilty issues in the industry and what we can do to further improve the situation.”

Malaysian palm oil seeks market recognition for environmental efforts

Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui, Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities for Malaysia, highlighted some of the key areas that the MPOC feels have been overlooked or misrepresented by environmental groups, including carbon emissions, governance, and use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Chin said that as a perennial tree crop with an economic life of 30 years, oil palm stores more carbon that other oilseeds, notably soy and rapeseed. Further, as the world’s most productive oilseed, palm oil does more to feed the world per unit of area than any other crop. He noted that contrary to public perception, most palm oil goes to food production rather than biofuels.

The minister said recent attacks by European NGOs on the carbon balance of palm oil were unfair to Malaysia, suggesting that European production of rapeseed and other crops generated greater emissions than responsibly produced palm oil. He also noted that Europe had destroyed the vast majority of its forests.

Chin claimed that most oil palm plantations in Malaysia have been established on previously logged lands and areas formerly used for other types of plantations, like rubber and cacao. Unlike Indonesia, oil palm in Malaysia is today only established in legally sanctioned areas, he said. He alleged that NGOs have overstated biodiversity loss resulting from the establishment of plantations.

Chin discussed some of the environmentally-friendly initiatives of the industry including a zero burning policy, utilization of waste (palm branches are used as organic fertilizer), treatment of wastewater, and integrated pest management to reduce the need for pesticides by using natural predators like owls, snakes, and insects to control pests.

Chin also announced the official launch of the RM20 million ($6.4 million) Malaysian Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund to sponsor studies on wildlife, oil palm and the environment. Half the fund will come from Malaysian palm oil firms; the other half is a grant from the Malaysian government. Chin mentioned the Borneo Conservation Trust, a project that seeks verify the number of orangutans in Sabah. Presently it is believed there are some 12,000 orangutans in the state, a steep drop since 1950.

Controversies

While many of the speakers portrayed the palm oil industry in a positive light with regards to its environmental performance, a few presenters took exception to some claims, notably the impact of oil palm on biodiversity loss and deforestation, the virtue of converting peatlands for oil palm, and the behavior of Malaysian firms operating outside of Malaysia.

Dr. David Wilcove, a professor at Princeton, said there is no question that oil palm plantations are biologically impoverished relative to natural forest, even when it has been logged. Darrel Webber of WWF-Malaysia said that extensive areas of healthy forests have been transformed into oil palm plantations since the early 1980s and expressed concern that high palm oil prices and lack of suitable land for oil palm cultivation in Sabah will increased development pressure on the Malaysian state’s forest reserves. A member of the Borneo Orangutan Society accused the MPOC of portraying orangutan populations as being healthier than they really are and said the industry’s RM10 million ($3.2 million) will not be enough to have much of an impact on the endangered apes.

Another source of controversy was whether tropical peatlands can be developed safely for oil palm cultivation. While Dr. S. Paramanathan of Param Agricultural Soil Surveys said that emissions from conversion are often overstated by environmental groups who fail to accurately sample peat soils, he conceded that until more is known about the carbon impact of peatlands conversion, peat should be treated as a “problem soil.” One audience member proposed a ban until it is determined whether peatlands can be converted for agriculture without significant greenhouse gas emissions. Paramanathan said the Malaysian government should carry out a full inventory of all the country’s peatlands.

The environmental performance of Malaysian-run plantations in Kalimantan and Sumatra was also a concern. Sarala Aikanathan of Wetlands International suggested a double standard among Malaysian plantation operators: they follow the rules in Malaysia, but jettison them in Indonesia where law enforcement is lax and more forest is available for the taking. She added that European consumers are sincere about green energy and that Malaysia could gain by improving the sustainability of the palm oil industry.

Presenters

Other presenters included representatives from Sime Darby, SIRIM Berhad, Wilmar International Limited, IOI Corporation, AES AgriVerde Services, Hart Energy Consulting, the Sarawak Department of Agriculture, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, PERHILITAN, the Borneo Conservation Trust, CarbonCapital Solutions, and Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company.

Jakarta - The police chief in West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian part of Borneo island has been removed in connection with rampant illegal logging activity, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

National police spokesman Inspector General Abubakar Nataprawira said Brigadier General Zainal Abidin Ishak had been replaced and transferred to National Police headquarters in Jakarta

Nataprawira said along with Ishak, the chief of West Kalimantan’s Ketapang district police was also transferred to the capital in connection with the illegal logging activity.

Three police officials in West Kalimantan’s Ketapang district were arrested last week for their alleged roles in illegal logging in the province.

According to the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, Indonesia had the world’s fastest rate of deforestation between 2000 and 2005, with the equivalent area of 300 football pitches cut down every hour.

Deforestation is regarded as the main factor for Indonesia turning into the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

Source: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/asiapacific/news/article_1400102.php/Indonesian_police_officers_sacked_over_illegal_logging

By William Surman

UK megastore TESCO has been accused of selling biodiesel made from palm oil grown at the expense of rainforests.

Greenpeace campaigners bought biodiesel from a Tesco forecourt in North London last week and lab tests revealed that 30 per cent of the biofuel mix was made up from palm oil.

Activists claim that palm plantations are grown at the expense of bio-diverse tropical rainforests and argue that the change of land use releases more carbon into the air than is saved by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Tesco rebuffed the Greenpeace accusations and said that palm oil used in their fuel production was subject to strict sustainable criteria.

From yesterday (Tuesday, April 15), the Renewable Fuel Transport Obligation (RTFO) require all fuel suppliers to add at least 2.5 per cent biofuel to petrol and diesel in an attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Palm oil has a higher yield per hectare than any other oilseed crop and Greenpeace senior forests campaigner Belinda Fletcher fears that the obligation could lead to the destruction of more rainforests to make way for the crop.

“It’s madness that when you buy diesel at Tesco you are now pumping palm oil into your tank. Palm oil is the leading cause of rainforest destruction in countries like Indonesia. Here is the proof that the Government’s biofuels policy, designed to tackle climate change, could end up making it far worse,” she said.

Tesco said the Greenpeace comments were ‘highly misleading’.

Fuel company Greenergy, the UK’s leading biofuel producer and Tesco supplier, are participating members on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

“We buy all of our palm oil from RSPO members,” said a Greenergy spokesman adding that by the end of 2008 there would be a rigorous auditing system to make sure all imports were from sustainable plantations.

Transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick said that consumption of palm oil for food, not biofuels, was of much more significance to the environment but he conceded that strict standards must be in place to prevent the destruction of rainforests.

Source: http://www.farmersguardian.com/story.asp?sectioncode=19&storycode=17777

Among his many credits, Ollie Johnston drew The Jungle Book’s singing orangutan, King Louie. Voiced by Louis Prima, the iconic song “I Wanna Be Like You” is instantly recognizable. Forget about the fact that there are no orangutans in India. Nor do orangutans necessarily want ‘to be like you’. King Louie is still a cultural icon! Rest in Peace, Mr. Johnston. ~ Rich

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Ollie Johnston, the last of the “Nine Old Men” who animated “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Fantasia,” “Bambi” and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.

Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday.

“Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today,” Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his “Nine Old Men,” borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of the U.S. Supreme Court’s members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.

Although most of Disney’s men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Johnston and Thomas and their families became neighbors in the Los Angeles suburb of Flintridge, and during their 45-minute drive to the Disney Studios each day, they would devise fresh ideas for work.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on “Snow White” and became an animation supervisor on “Fantasia” and “Bambi” and animator on “Pinocchio.”

He was especially proud of his work on “Bambi” and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi’s mother at the hands of a hunter. That scene has brought tears to the eyes of generations of young and old viewers.

“The mother’s death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion,” he remarked in 1999.

Johnston’s other credits included “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Peter Pan,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “101 Dalmatians,” “Mary Poppins,” “The Jungle Book,” “The Aristocats,” “Robin Hood” and “The Rescuers.”

“[People] know his work. They know his characters. They’ve seen him act without realizing it,” film historian Leonard Maltin said. “He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation.”

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe. They also co-authored the books “Bambi: The Story and the Film,” “Too Funny for Words,” “The Disney Villains” and the epic “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life.” They were the subjects of the 1995 documentary “Frank and Ollie,” produced by Thomas’ son Ted.

The pair’s guide to animation is considered “the bible” among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston’s longtime friend.

Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was born October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, where his father was a professor at Stanford. He once noted that he and Thomas “were bound to be thrown together” at the university, as they were two of only six students in its art department at the time. When not in class, they painted landscapes and sold them at a local speakeasy for meal money.

Johnston had planned on becoming a magazine illustrator but fell in love with animation.

“I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the stories,” he once said. “But I found that [in animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings.”

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989, and in 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

He was also a major train enthusiast. The backyard of his Flintridge home boasted a hand-built miniature railroad, and Johnston restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, California.

Johnston’s wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/15/obit.johnston.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON, April 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Danny M. Chien, a Taiwanese citizen and resident of Shanghai, China, and Style Craft Furniture Co., Ltd., were each indicted today by a federal grand jury in Newark, N.J., on one count of smuggling, announced Ronald J. Tenpas,Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and Christopher J. Christie, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

The company, a manufacturer of wooden baby furniture located primarily in China, imported approximately $15 million in declared value of wood furniture in 2004-2005.

According to the indictment, on approximately May 23, 2005, Chien, the day-to-day manager and president of Style Craft Furniture, shipped a container of furniture from China into the United States at Port Elizabeth, N.J., containing a wood commonly called “ramin.” The indictment alleges that the ramin originated from the wild in Indonesia and was imported without a valid required export permit or re-export certificate in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China are, and were in 2005, signatories to the convention.

CITES protects certain species of fish, wildlife, and plants against overexploitation by regulating trade in the species. Species listed in Appendix II are those that may become threatened with extinction unless trade is strictly regulated. International efforts to curb the illegal harvest of ramin, used in the manufacture of baby cribs, include its listing in Appendix II of CITES.

For any trade of these species, CITES requires that the country of origin must issue a valid export permit. A permit can only be obtained if it has been determined that the export of the species will not be detrimental to the species’ survival and that the specimen was not obtained in violation of wildlife protection laws. For any re-export, the country of re-export must issue a valid re-export certificate. The export permit or re-export certificate must be obtained prior to importation into the United States.

Ramin is a light colored tropical hardwood found in tropical forests in parts of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia. These forests also serve in part as habitat for endangered orangutan. Indonesia has one of the highest rates of deforestation of any county, much of it due to illegal timber harvest. As a result, the Indonesian government is attempting to combat the illegal harvest of timber, including ramin, in part to protect the remaining orangutan habitat. They have done this through a variety of means including listing ramin in CITES Appendix III since 2001 and then CITES Appendix II effective Jan. 12, 2005.

An indictment contains only allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Under U.S. law, the Endangered Species Act prohibits any person from trading in specimens in violation of CITES. The maximum penalty for a smuggling violation by an individual at the time of the alleged violation is five years imprisonment and a fine of either $250,000, or twice the pecuniary gain or loss caused by the offense. The maximum fine for an organization is $500,000 or twice the pecuniary gain or loss caused by the offense.

The investigation was conducted by Special Agents of the Office of the Inspector General, the criminal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The case is being prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of New Jersey.

SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-15-2008/0004793612&EDATE=