Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Greenpeace has called on crude palm oil producers to think of sustainable growth to prevent environmental damage.

“We are not against industries, but they need to understand the need for the most appropriate management of the environment so that industries could continue operating safely, without harming the environment,” Southeast Asia Greenpeace political advisor Arief Wicaksono told a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He added that the expand of land for the cultivation of oil palm should be temporarily stopped to enable the industries to continue operations safely.

“If the producers and suppliers of CPO, and CPO-consuming industries failed to immediately stop damaging the forests unsustainable industrial operations will create carbon emissions in the future,” he added.

He added that as the result of oil palm plantation expansion into forests, and peatland, will increase the emission of CO2 (carbon dioxide/greenhouse effect).

“In Indonesia, the annual greenhouse emissions from peatland located near oil palm concessions constitute one percent of the total global emissions,” he said.

He also said that if the Kyoto Protocal, second stage, is applied by giving a compensation 30 euro per ton of C02 gas emissions, the producers will lose their income.

As an example he cited Unilever as one of the biggest CPO consumers, if the carbon effects is directed to the company, it would have to pay 714 million euro per year, or 14 percent of its total profits.

“For that purpose, Unilever as a company has pioneered in calling for a halt in environmental damage through a moratorium in the CPO industry,” he said.

He also said that the damage on the forests caused by oil palm state expansion is also the result of bad government management of this industry.

JAKARTA (AFP) — The government of Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, is now looking at its vast easternmost provinces in Papua to expand its palm oil plantations, a senior official said Wednesday.

“After Sumatra and Kalimantan became too dense for new palm oil plantations, the only land available is in Papua,” the agriculture ministry’s Director General for Plantations, Achmad Manggabarani, said on the margin of a three-day international conference on the commodity here.

He said the two provinces in Papua, the western half of New Guinea island, have three to four million hectares (up to 9.8 million acres) of land suitable for palm oil plantation.

“Several companies have already expressed interest, especially from Malaysia,” Manggabarani said without giving details.

He said smaller concessions would be offered in Papua than the normal 100,000 to 200,000 hectares in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Under the country’s decentralisation drive, the issuing of palm oil concessions is the responsibility of local governments.

“They should only give out 20,000 hectares” per concession, Manggabarani said.

Several environmental groups, including Greenpeace, have called for a moratorium on the expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, warning that soaring world demand is creating an environmental crisis.

Hapsoro, forest campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, condemned the governments plans for the massive expansion of plantations on Papua.

“I hope it will never happen. Learning from what happened in Sumatra and Kalimantan, without good governance it will not be sustainable,” said Hapsoro, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia political advisor Arief Wicaksono applauded Anlgo-Dutch food and consumer goods giant Unilever, which said this month it backed a moratorium on further palm oil deforestation in Indonesia and intended to use only fully traceable palm oil by 2015.

“Greenpeace calls for the industry to work together for a moratorium on conversion of peatland and forests… We call on other palm oil producers to follow Unilever’s lead,” he said.

Indonesia produced an estimated 16.4 million tonnes of palm oil last year.

The destruction of Indonesia’s forests is seen as a major contributor to global warming and climate change.

Indonesia and Malaysia, the second largest producer, produce 85 percent of the world’s palm oil which is enjoying a boom on the back of strong global demand and tight supply.

By TAN CHENG LI

Our wildlife law calls for saving wildlife but it has limited powers to do so.

TRAP a tiger and you will be arrested. Sell wine or plaster made from ground tiger bone and you can escape punishment, reason being, the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972 (PWA) is silent on “derivatives” of protected species.

That is just one of many flaws prevalent in the PWA. Here’s another: contrary to popular belief, the elephant is not totally protected but listed as a “big game animal” in the Act – which means it can be hunted if one obtains a hunting permit from the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan).

And another: not a single plant, fish or amphibian is protected by the Act. There’s more: some highly endangered species are getting scant protection, legal hurdles abound when prosecuting offenders, penalties are ridiculously low … the list goes on – no wonder our wildlife is depleting.
Is it ethical to trap an endangered species such as this leopard, just to stock a zoo or animal farm?

Many species owe their survival to the PWA but this legislation has not kept up with the times in some instances. Today, with wildlife being pushed to the brink by habitat loss, poaching and flourishing commercial trade, the Act is in sore need of an overhaul.

“In dealing with sophisticated wildlife criminals and their syndicates, this 35-year-old law appears to be failing to achieve what it set out to do in the 1970s. It is outdated and there are many loopholes which unscrupulous criminals take advantage of, and at the expense of wildlife. We need the Act to be comprehensively reviewed, passed and implemented urgently,” says Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) executive director Dr Loh Chi Leong.

A review of the PWA dates back some 10 years and Natural Resources and Environment Ministry officials have said that a new Wildlife Protection and Conservation Bill is in the works. However, this document remains tightly under wraps. Wildlife protection groups, despite their vast knowledge and experience in wildlife management, are not privy to the Bill. Nevertheless, MNS, Worldwide Fund for Nature, Wildlife Conservation Society and Traffic South-East Asia have come together to highlight crucial elements missing in the PWA. They first submitted their recommendations to the Ministry three years ago and again, last month.

Punishment and derivatives

Low penalties – under the PWA and meted out by the courts – is a worry for the non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Remember the case of the butchered tiger in Tumpat, Kelantan? The offender got off with only a RM7,000 [1 USD = 3.24597 MYR] fine in 2005 although the PWA allows a maximum of RM15,000. That same year in Bentong, Pahang, a man caught with five bear paws, 32kg of bear meat and bones, one trophy barking deer head, four skinned civets, part of a hornbill beak, three skinned doves and nine live blue-crowned hanging parrots, was fined only RM5,500. Also in 2005, a man caught with four leopard cats in Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, and another with 294 pangolins in Perlis, were each fined RM3,000.
Wildlife laws have failed to keep up with growing threats to wildlife, such as the flourishing trade in wild meat.

Traffic regional director Azrina Abdullah says light sentences will not deter poachers. ”The impact of illegal trade on the survival of species underscores the need for strong penalties which reflect the harm caused,” she says.

The NGOs want penalties to be raised, to have a minimum, be based on the number of seized animals or wildlife products, and to include mandatory prison sentences for offences related to totally protected animals.

Another fault in the PWA is its silence over “derivatives”. It only states that “parts (readily recognisable)” of totally protected species cannot be traded. This oversight has hindered Perhilitan from stopping the sale of folk medicine containing by-products of animals such as the tiger and Sumatran rhinoceros. And even when the product label states that parts or derivatives of a totally protected species form the ingredients, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution to show that the product does contain that stuff.

To close these loopholes, Azrina says the word “derivatives” should go into the PWA, together with a “claims to contain clause” as seen in Sabah and Sarawak legislations and the newly passed International Trade in Endangered Species Act 2007. There must also be legal provision to shift the burden of proof to the offender.

Listing of species

The PWA may have extensive lists of “totally protected” and “protected” species but these cover only terrestrial and marine mammals, birds and 40 species of butterflies. Glaringly absent are plants, amphibians, insects, spiders, freshwater turtles and tortoises, and fish. The result is oddities such as this: the polar bear is protected whereas the highly traded arowana fish is not.

The omission of plants from the PWA (because they are not considered “wildlife”) means that all our flora have no protection unless they grow in protected areas such as wildlife reserves and parks. The lists of protected species need a review as some species in trouble are still not totally protected, for instance the Asian elephant, Irrawaddy dolphin and pilot whale. Freshwater turtles and tortoises are also getting a raw deal as they are under state control but not all states protect them.

Wildlife groups want all plants and amphibians added to the PWA, and the Asian elephant and sambar deer moved to the “totally protected” schedule. They say species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species should be added to the PWA.

Except for marine mammals like whales and dolphins, marine species are ignored in the PWA. There was a debate over who should be in charge of marine species, Perhilitan or the Fisheries Department, with the latter eventually staking claim despite concerns that its priority is to improve fish hauls rather than conserving them. The Fisheries Act 1985 had nothing on biodiversity protection until it was amended in 1999 and only then to include a handful of imperilled species such as the whale shark, giant clam and some marine turtles. Corals, other marine invertebrates, sharks and threatened reef fish such as the Napoleon wrasse and groupers remain unprotected.

The bigger picture

Listing animals for protection, however, serves little good if wild lands continue to shrink. Entire ecosystems and habitats, from lowland forests to wetlands, are now just as scarce as the wildlife they harbour and yet, the PWA does not oversee habitat protection and cannot stop conversion of wildlife refuges into plantations or settlements.

What is needed, says WWF policy co-ordinator Preetha Sankar, is legislation that is holistic in nature. To steer the PWA towards this direction, she says we need provisions that protect critical wildlife habitats, restore degraded habitats and provide for species recovery plans.

The public also deserves a bigger role in wildlife conservation. In Australia, the law allows the public to nominate species for protection. The PWA offers no such public involvement. To create an informed public which can help defend threatened wildlife, the NGOs propose an information register on these: all Perhilitan wildlife sanctuaries and their boundaries; regulations enacted under the PWA; issued licences and special permits and the quotas; prosecution cases; sites for licensed hunting and collection; and methods used to set hunting quotas and bag limits.

There is no denying that the PWA has helped safeguard Malaysian wildlife but in some areas, it is no longer current. One is hard-pressed to name a species that has rebounded thanks to the PWA.

It is time to fix the flaws with a new Bill that has bite, and soon, before more species tip over the edge.

NGOs have collected over 6,000 signatures calling for urgent and thorough review of the PWA. To sign the petition, go to www.mns.org.my.

Source: http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/5/20/lifefocus/21278432&sec=lifefocus

London, May 20 (ANI): Three species every hour are being scraped off from earth due to pollution, it has been revealed at world conference to save wildlife.

It was 65 years ago that dinosaurs were eradicated from the earth and since then, no rate of extinction has been observed as yet.

But now a shock report on the destruction of natural habitats has alarmed many by indicating that one in four mammals are on the endangered list, which includes orangutans, chimpanzees and elephants.

The United Nations World Conservation Union reports that the list includes one in eight bird types, a third of amphibians and 70 Per Cent of plant life.

The reports have cautioned if there wont be any action taken for greenhouse gases and climate change, it could actually put food supplies in danger and destroy the foundation of human life, reports The Sun.

In fact, much of harm has already been done with the destruction costs already hitting 1.8 billion pounds per year.

Officials attended the conference, at Bonn , Germany , from 191 countries, and they are planning to discuss ways of slowing the extinction rate.

However, according to German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, the world faced a Herculean task.

While a UN summit in 2002 had already set a target for slowing extinction, but it is still lagging way behind schedule.

Scientists in Australia have already reactivated DNA from an extinct species by using a Tasmanian tiger sample in mouse embryos. (ANI)

Source: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/pollution-eats-up-3-species-every-hour_10050693.html

mongabay.com
May 20, 2008

More than half of the oil palm expansion between 1990 and 2005 in Malaysia and Indonesia occurred at expense of forests, reports a new analysis published in the journal Conservation Letters. The conversion had a “detrimental” impact on regional biodiversity say the authors.

Analyzing data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Lian Pin Koh and David S. Wilcove of Princeton University found that 55-59 percent of oil palm expansion in Malaysia and at least 56 percent of that in Indonesia occurred at the expense of forests. Given that oil palm plantations are biologically impoverished relative to primary and secondary forests, the researchers recommend restricting future expansion to pre-existing cropland and degraded habitats.
In recent years Malaysia and Indonesia have rapidly expanded the area of land devoted to oil palm cultivation: between 1990 and 2005 the area of oil palm plantations in Malaysia more than doubled to 3.6 million ha; in Indonesia the area planted with palm expanded by more than 270 percent to 4.1 million ha. At the same time Indonesia’s forest cover declined by 28 million ha, while Malaysia lost some 1.5 million ha. Koh and Wilcove calculate that at least 1.704 million ha of forest land in Indonesia and 1.04 million ha in Malaysia were converted for the oilseed during the period.

“Our analysis indicates that oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia have replaced forests and, to a lesser extent, pre-existing cropland,” the authors write.

Using data on birds and butterflies showing that conversion of forest to oil palm produces steep declines in species richness, Koh and Wilcove say the expansion of the oil palm estate in Malaysia and Indonesia negatively affected regional biodiversity.

Noting that demand for palm oil is expected to increase dramatically in coming years, the authors suggest future oil palm expansion be limited to lands that have already been converted for agriculture or are otherwise heavily degraded. Even logged forests — which support considerably higher levels of biological diversity than plantations — should be off-limits to oil palm development, they conclude.

Lian Pin Koh & David S. Wilcove (2008). Is oil palm agriculture really destroying tropical biodiversity? Conservation Letters. April 2008 (Vol. 1 Issue 1 Page 1-5)

Source: http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0520-palm_oil.html

Baby orangutans at the Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre

By Paul Eccleston

Lone Dröscher-Nielsen gave up her career with Scandinavian Airlines and set up the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in 1999 when she became aware of how serious a threat the great apes were facing.

Since then it has become the largest primate rescue project in the world, caring for almost 600 animals.
The youngsters of Orangutan Island live in a community where they have to learn to deal with social issues

Now she has established an island sanctuary where orphaned baby orangutans driven from their rainforest homelands of Borneo and Sumatra by illegal logging are being taught the skills they will need to survive in the wild as adults.

The progress of the 35 young apes on the 100-acre protected island at the Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre features in a television series Orangutan Island which begins next week.

Unlike wild orangutans, who live mostly solitary lives, the youngsters of Orangutan Island live in a community where they have to learn to deal with social issues such as friendship, bullying and power struggles.

The series chronicles their attempts to learn to live independently without the human support systems they have come to rely on. The hope is that they will learn survival techniques so they can be returned to their natural habitat.
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Miss Dröscher-Nielsen said of the experiment: “As a whole the orangutans have done very well, fending for themselves on the island. There have been a few who have not exactly done great but they have survived and will continue to improve.”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/05/19/eaorangutan119.xml

Who do you suppose will get the money? And will the forests really be protected???? ~ Rich

Adianto P. Simamora , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 05/17/2008 11:15 AM | National

The government called on developed nations to buy carbon credits from Indonesia, rather than push for a moratorium on forestry activities.

The Forestry Ministry expressed concern over rising calls from the international community for Indonesia to cease forestry activities in order to combat climate change.

“It would only hamper our economic development. If the carbon buyers sincerely want to protect the earth and help Indonesia, they should buy carbon stocks in protected and conservation forests,” the ministry’s director of forestry production management, Agus Sarsito, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He said protected and conservation areas had long been permanent carbon stores. There are about 40 million hectares of protected and conservation forests in the country.

Agus said the ministry was also concerned about misplaced enthusiasm from local administrations for the proposed carbon trading scheme.

“Local administrations should obviously be involved in the project. But there are misunderstandings about it since the government has not yet drawn up the details,” he said.

“Many local administrators now expect to make big money by merely selling carbon credits. The carbon buyers have been very persistent in informing people of the carbon business.”

Carbon trading has flourished since the UN climate change conference in Bali last December adopted the reduction emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) initiative.

The REDD concept is closely tied to the Kyoto Protocol, which obligates 38 developed countries to reduce their carbon emissions by about 5 percent by 2012, when the protocol expires. To meet this target and also maintain economic growth, these countries may “sell” their carbon to developing countries.

Once Kyoto Protocol signatories agree to the REDD concept as a mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they can begin buying carbon credits from countries with extensive forest reserves.

The Kyoto Protocol currently allows only developing nations, including Indonesia, to promote afforestation and reforestation projects to tap financial incentives from carbon trading. However, none of the projects have been implemented in Indonesia because the government considers the system too complicated.

The government introduced its own emission reduction scheme at the Bali conference. The scheme was drawn up by experts from the Indonesia Forest Climate Alliance (IFCA). They said with carbon priced at $10 per ton, Indonesia could make $2 million per year, with 65 percent of the revenue going to local communities living near forests.

The governors of Aceh and Papua were among the first to express an interest in the scheme shortly after it was launched.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/05/17/ri-opts-carbon-trading-over-halting-deforestation.html

United States - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress’ new agriculture bill, which looks certain to become law, would tighten rules for lumber imports in an effort to discourage environmentally destructive, illegal logging overseas.

The 2008 farm bill, which Congress passed this week in bipartisan votes strong enough to overcome a White House veto, includes new rules that would prohibit imports of illegally logged wood and wood products.

It also would require importers to declare the species and country of origin for imports of wood and many plants, and would empower the government to seize suspect shipments and prosecute timber smugglers.

According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, 10 percent of all U.S. imports of wood products in 2006 could be traced back to illegally logged timber, which can include wood harvested from a foreign country’s national parks or shipped in violation of export restrictions .

“This is the first time any country in the world has prohibited import of illegally logged products,” said Alexander von Bismarck, the group’s executive director.

“Companies around the world are going to need to immediately change their operations in order to have a high level of confidence in who they’re buying from,” he said.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who championed the measure in the House of Representatives, said illegal logging cost the U.S. forest products industry more than $1 billion a year.

“Not only does illegal logging threaten some of the world’s richest and most vulnerable forests, but it leads to serious human rights violations,” Blumenauer said in a statement.

President Bush has promised to veto the $290-billion farm bill, which the administration says is a “bloated, earmark-laden” measure that fails to truly reform crop subsidies and promises new problems with trade partners. But after overwhelming support in votes this week, Congress looks set to override that veto.

(Reporting by Missy Ryan, Editing by David Gregorio)

(Email: missy.ryan@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: missy.ryan.reuters.com@reuters.net; + 202-898-8376))

By KEITH MORELLI
The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA Luna Bella is like most 10-year-old kids: Curious to the point of getting into trouble.

And that’s likely what happened when the 85-pound orangutan hopped out of her enclosure at Busch Gardens’ new Jungala exhibit Saturday, according to an orangutan expert familiar with the incident.

“Basically, they are very intelligent and curious,” said Richard Zimmerman, director of Orangutan Outreach in New York. “It’s more that they are curious; if they see an opportunity, they’ll go for it.

“If they see a hole in the fence, if the opportunity is there, they will take it. Generally, they don’t do much. They just go to the other side of the fence or wall and just stay there.”

Zimmerman is familiar with Luna Bella. He said she was born in the Houston Zoo to an orangutan named Kelly, who was inattentive. So Luna Bella was placed with Cheyenne, a surrogate mother.

But Luna Bella became accustomed to being cared for by humans, and that exposure probably had an influence, he said.

“I think that in this particular incident with Luna Bella,” Zimmerman said, “she had exposure to humans at an early age so she got a jump start on intelligence.”

The orangutan was coaxed into her night quarters by keepers almost immediately, and no spectators were injured.

“They generally are peaceful, so there is hardly ever a fear of them being violent,” Zimmerman said.

Luna Bella, a Bornean orangutan, scaled the exhibit’s 12-foot barrier. Within an hour, she was safe and sound in her quarters, park officials said. She remained calm throughout the incident, officials said.

It was the second primate escape in the Tampa Bay area in a month. The first was at Polk County’s fledgling Safari Wild preserve in April. That’s when 15 patas monkeys swam a moat and scaled a wall to gain their freedom.

Thirteen of those monkeys remain in the wilds of northern Polk County.

Investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were expected to visit Busch Gardens this week to find out what happened, agency spokesman Gary Morse said today .

Park officials say it was not a case of human error.

Jungala is open, but the part of the exhibit where the escape occurred is empty, said Glenn Young, vice president of zoological operations at Busch Gardens. Orangutans still are part of the experience, but on the other side of the exhibit, he said.

Park officials are examining the structure to see what changes need to be made to keep an orangutan escape from happening again, Young said.

Luna Bella, who has been at Busch Gardens for more than three years, was able to figure it out.

She was on a platform near a viewing window and simply grabbed the outside edge of the window and swung herself up onto the corner of the building.

“It was a surprise, yes,” Young said. “And there she sat on the roof. She looked like she wanted to come down, to get back into the habitat but didn’t know how to navigate that.”

She is used to her handlers and came when they called to her. She was led back to her night quarters without incident, Young said. “She went in there, and we closed the doors,” he said.

“The relationship our staff has with all of our animals and this animal is extremely impressive,” Young said. “There is a strong bond between our caretakers and Luna Bella, and that was instrumental. These are very intelligent animals. They are great, beautiful, magnificent animals that are interesting to watch. And they’re in peril in their natural habitat.”

Jungala, a 4-acre attraction set in the Congo area of the park, opened in April and features an up-close experience with exotic animals.

Park officials called the exhibit the “most ambitious park enhancement project to date.”

Zimmerman said the wild orangutan populations are centered mostly in Borneo and Sumatra and are threatened because of encroachment of humans into their habitat.

“Some of the populations will be extinct within three years,” Zimmerman said. “They are incredibly threatened.”

He blamed palm oil, a much-sought-after ingredient that goes into food, soap and now biofuel, he said. Rain forests are being burned to make room for palm tree plantations to produce the oil.

The orangutans live in the rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, he said.

Orangutans in the zoos mostly these days are born in captivity. “No one brings them out of the jungles anymore to sell to the zoos,” Zimmerman said.

Captive breeding programs are being conducted around the world in hopes of someday repopulating the wild with them and saving the species.

Source: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/may/19/orangutan-escapes-busch-gardens-exhibit/

By Michael Hogan (Reuters)

BERLIN, May 19 (Reuters) - The first consignments of palm oil, certified as produced using farming which has not involve destroying tropical rain forests, will arrive in Germany in the second half of this year, the German edible oil industry association OVID said on Monday.

But palm oil certified under the programme Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) could be up to 10 percent more expensive than non-certified oil, OVID Chairman Wilhelm Thywissen told a press conference.

However, it was not yet possible to make an accurate forecast of the price difference.

Asian and South American countries have been criticised by environmentalists for expanding palm oil production by cutting down tropical rain forests, in a controversy which has also been felt by industrial palm oil buyers in Europe and elsewhere.

“We are vehemently against tropical rain forests being destroyed in producing countries for cultivation of oilseeds,” Thywissen said.

The European Union is discussing a programme to prevent palm oil produced on former rainforest land being used for EU biofuels production, but the RSPO would apply to both food and biofuel industries, he said.

The RSPO was established in 2004 on the initiative of environmental pressure group World Wildlife Fund, bringing palm oil industry and consumers together.

Juergen Keil, from the German unit of giant U.S. commodity group Cargill, said the first consignments of certified palm oil for Germany this year were likely to come from Asia, probably Malaysia, Indonesia or Papua New Guinea.

Cargill, among the world’s largest vegetable oil and oilseeds traders, was working to certify its own Asian palm oil plantations and was encouraging its supplies to participate, he said.

He would not comment on the likely volumes of certified palm oil likely to arrive, but said he hoped they would be significant.

Along with the costs of certification, certified palm oil would face substantial additional expense such as being transported and stored separately from other palm oil.

Some observers have doubts whether Germany’s food processing industry will be willing to pay more for such certified products at a time when the country’s giant discount supermarket chains are involved in an intense price war to attract customers into their shops.

But OVID Chief Executive Petra Sprick said the association believed there will be considerable interest in the palm oil even at a time of intense retail price pressure.

A major European processor, Unilever , has already publicly stated it would use it, and she hoped others would follow.
When the certified oil is actually available, food processors would also be able to label their products as using ingredients only produced from sustainable farming.

“We firmly believe that these products will receive increased consumer demand,” said Keil. “We believe a momentum will be generated which will create a transformation of the global supply system.”

The palm oil initiative follows another voluntary agreement, the Round Table on Responsible Soy, which the oilseeds industry claims has put a virtual stop to destruction of tropical rain forest in Brazil for soybean cultivation. (Editing by Ben Tan)

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7526076

Palm oil is in a surprising number of household products and food — and producing it wreaks havoc on the environment.

By Glenn Hurowitz
May 19, 2008

While showering a few weeks ago, I realized I had run out of conditioner. So I reached up and grabbed my wife’s bottle — Clairol Herbal Essences Rainforest Flowers, “with essences of nourishing palm.”

The label caught me slightly by surprise. As an environmental journalist, I’ve been writing about the ecologically destructive effect of palm oil for some time now.

Whether it’s used as an additive in soap, cosmetics or food, or processed into a biofuel, palm oil is one of the worst culprits in the climate crisis. Most of it comes from the disappearing, ultra-carbon-rich rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, of which a whopping 25,000 square miles have been cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations.

That burning releases enough carbon dioxide into the air to rank Indonesia as the No. 3 such polluter in the world. It also destroys the last remaining habitat for orangutans, Sumatran rhinos, tigers and other endangered wildlife. So what was this deadly oil doing in our otherwise ecologically friendly apartment?

I started to inspect other items on our shelves. Despite our efforts to keep our family green, we’d admitted into our home several products containing palm oil: Burt’s Bees soap, chocolate truffles from Trader Joe’s, Kashi breakfast bars, Whole Foods water crackers and many others.

Probably the worst offenders were Entenmann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts, which actually list palm oil as the first ingredient — and palm kernel oil as the second. Lots of other products, some of them marketed as “green,” contain this rhino-killer too: Oreos, Chewy Chips Ahoy!, Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn, Hershey’s Kisses “Hugs,” Twix and many other processed foods. Even some Girl Scout cookies have it, which is why this spring, 12-year-old Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen of Ann Arbor, Mich., refused to sell the cookies and have encouraged the organization to drop the ingredient.

The great tragedy of all this palm oil use (about 30 million tons globally every year) is that it’s so easily replaced by healthier vegetable oils, like canola, that come from significantly less-ecologically sensitive areas. Indeed, every single product I examined had either a variant or a competitor that didn’t contain palm oil — with no discernible effect on price or quality. Sitting next to those Whole Foods-brand water crackers were Haute Cuisine water crackers made with canola oil. Down the aisle from palm-oil laden Ivory soap was palm-oil-free Lever 2000.

Unfortunately, most of the food and cosmetics conglomerates are more interested in covering up the environmental destruction than replacing the problem ingredient. Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Unilever, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and others (including the Girl Scouts) assure the public that such environmental concerns don’t apply to them because they (or their suppliers) are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry group (with a handful of environmental members) that sets guidelines on growing and selling palm oil.

Unfortunately, as a recent Greenpeace report revealed, the Round- table’s standards are almost meaningless because they don’t include inspections of the palm oil tree plantations. The Roundtable plans to address this problem in the next few months by certifying a small amount of oil that it says has been verifiably produced according to some sustainable standards. But even Roundtable Vice President Darrel Webber admits that the process “isn’t perfect,” in part because liquid oils are easy to mix and nearly impossible to track.

So how can we keep dead orangutans out of our hair, out of our food and out of our gas tanks? Consumers should scan ingredient labels for palm oil and palm kernel oil (and derivatives such as palmitic acid) and choose brands that don’t contain them. Wall Street should divest from this ecologically sub-prime market, not only because it’s the right thing to do but because its high carbon footprint means that palm oil producers and buyers are likely to be penalized in any scheme to reduce global warming.

But governments must act too. The European Union, for instance, is considering a ban on palm oil and other tropical biofuels. But as my hair conditioner shows, targeting biofuels alone isn’t enough: Any ban must extend to food and cosmetics as well.

That may slightly inconvenience the food and cosmetics companies, but at least we’ll know that no orangutans died to make our Thin Mints.

Glenn Hurowitz writes about the environment for Grist Magazine and is the author of the book “Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party.”

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hurowitz19-2008may19,0,6565330.story

Tampa, Florida— A 10-year-old female orangutan named Luna Bella escaped from her habitat at Busch Gardens for nearly an hour Saturday as park staff rushed to evacuate guests.

The entire event was caught on tape as the 85 pound ape scaled a 12 foot wall and climbed onto the roof of her exhibit, just feet away from park visitors.

At a news conference late Saturday night, park officials reported guest were never in danger.

“Our protocol when something like this happens is to clear the area of all guests. And we did that right away,” said Busch Gardens vice president of Zoological Operations, Glenn Young.

Angie Westbrook and Demetri Houmis were spending the day together at Busch Gardens when around 6:30 they spotted the orangutan a rooftop nearby.

“The staff, they were high strung and very stressed about getting all of the people out of the whole area,” said Westbrook who was caught off guard by the escape.

A group of kids in a nearby children’s area were also evacuated and got to see the orangutan up close before being taken to a safer area.

Handlers from the Jungala exhibit were eventually able to use bananas and vanilla ice cream to entire Luna Bella back into her habitat. She was finally safe in her night quarters by around 7:30, around the time the park was scheduled to close.

Law enforcement investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will be out at the park Sunday investigating what went wrong. The Department of Agriculture, the federal agency which regulates zoos may also send an inspector.

Busch Gardens officials say they do not believe human error was to blame for the orangutan’s escape. Instead they will study the structural design of the exhibit to make sure orangutans can’t escape again.

The orangutans will remain in an enclosed area away from where the escape occurred until investigators determine what went wrong.

Orangutans are considered some of the smartest animals on Earth besides humans. They are generally passive, but can be fiercely territorial.

An escape in May of last year at a zoo in Taiwan left visitors terrified when the male ape began flipping over picnic tables and motorcycles. Orangutans have also been known to bite humans when upset.

Bela Luna has lived at Busch Gardens for three and a half years and is said to have a strong relationship with her trainers.

Source: http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?s=rss&storyid=80642