By TOM WRIGHT

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The United States will sign an agreement Tuesday to forgive nearly $30 million in Indonesian debt in return for the large Southeast Asian country agreeing to protect forests on Sumatra Island, which is home to endangered tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutan.

The deal is the largest so-called debt-for-nature swap the U.S. government has organized so far under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act and its first such pact with Indonesia, which has one of the fastest deforestation rates in the world, losing an area of forest the size of Switzerland annually.

Conservation International, the U.S.-based conservancy group, helped organize the deal, and has contributed $1 million to help reduce the debt. “This is a huge boost for people and wildlife of Sumatra, and demonstrates a forward-looking policy on the part of the U.S. government,” said Jatna Supriatna, vice president of Conservation International Indonesia.

Under the deal, Indonesia will pay the nearly $30 million into a trust over eight years instead of repaying it to the U.S. government. The trust will issue grants for critical forest conservation work in 13 forest areas in Sumatra.

The U.S. in the past has organized smaller debt-for-nature swaps with countries like Guatemala, Botswana, the Philippines and Peru. Under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998, developing nations with a significant tropical forest, a democratically-elected government, and an economic reform agenda, are eligible for debt forgiveness in return for conservation efforts.

Indonesia’s massive deforestation rates makes it the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide behind the United States and China due to the forest fires set each year on peat lands to clear forests. Deforestation has picked up in the past decade due to a break down in law and order, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is standing for re-election next month, has made clamping down on illegal logging a priority.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah government wants to purchase privately owned land at zones neighbouring the fragmented Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary to ensure the long-term survival of iconic wildlife such as the orang utan.
The move, along with plans to buy land at river banks, will lead to the eventual creation of forest corridors at the 26,000ha sanctuary, which is divided into 10 lots due to prior existence of oil palm plantations and villages.

Currently, a non-profit organisation, Borneo Conservation Trust, is purchasing land for the same purpose using money raised from corporations and individuals concerned with warnings of possible in-breeding of certain species that are unable to move from one protected forest to another.

Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said such a move was necessary for the sake of wildlife.

“For example, we have an estimated 30 Sumatran rhinoceroses but the remaining individuals are not breeding.
“We believe one reason for this is forests are not connected and they can’t move about.”

He said this when launching the Kinabatangan-Corridor of Life Tourism Association at Kampung Bilit on the banks of the Kinabatangan river at Sabah’s east coast, yesterday.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Tuesday/National/2595664/Article/index_html

Source: mongabay.com
June 29, 2009

Two drugs derived from rainforest plants in Sarawk (Malaysian Borneo) are now in their final stages of development, reports Malaysian state media, Bernama.

Calanolide, an anti-HIV drug derived from the Bintangor or Calophyllum tree, is now in the clinical trial stage, said Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan, speaking to reporters in Miri, Sarawak at the launch of the official website for the Borneo Research Council Conference 2010.

Dr Chan said that samples of the anti-cancer drug Silvestrol were sent to the National Cancer Institute in the United States for testing.

Calanolide A

Rainforest plants have long been recognized for their potential to provide healing compounds. Indigenous peoples of the rainforest have used medicinal plants for treating a wide variety of health conditions while western pharmacologists have derived a number of drugs from such plants.

However, as forests around the world continue to fall — the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia together have lost more than 120,000 square miles of forest in the past decade — there is a real risk that pharmaceutically-useful plants will disappear before they are examined for their chemical properties. Increasingly, it is becoming a race against time to collect and screen plants before their native habitats are destroyed. One near miss occurred recently with a compound that has shown significant anti-HIV effects, Calanolide A.

Calanolide A is derived from Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum, an exceedingly rare member of the Guttiferae or mangosteen family. Samples of Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum were first collected in 1987 on a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored expedition in Sarawak. Once scientists determined that Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum showed activity against HIV, researchers returned to the original kerangas forest near Lundu (Sarawak, Malaysia) to gather more plant matter for isolating the active compound. The tree was gone — likely felled by locals for fuelwood or building material. The disappearance of the tree lead to mad search by botanists for further specimen. Good news finally came from the Singapore’s Botanical Garden which had in its possession several plants collected by the British over 100 years earlier. Sarawak banned the felling and export of Calophyllum shortly thereafter.

Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTIs) are a class of anti-HIV drugs that prevent healthy T-cells in the body from becoming infected with HIV. Approved NNRTIs include Viramune® (nevirapine) from Boehringer Ingelheim, Sustiva® (efavirenz) from Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Rescriptor® (delavirdine) from Pfizer. Most NNRTIs dramatically reduce viral load soon after the first dose is taken, but Calanolide A, for reasons that are not yet known, seems to have a delayed effect.

Due to the low prevalence of Calanolide A in Calophyllum lanigerum var austrocoriaceum (only 0.05% can be extracted from the twigs and leaves) Sarawak MediChem Pharmaceuticals, has developed and patented a process for the total synthesis of (+)-Calanolide A. Calanolide A is currently in clinical trials but is not yet approved by the FDA for use outside of clinical trials.

A related species, Calophyllum teysmannii var. inophylloide, produces a compound (Costatolide) that also exhibits activity against HIV. Costatolide, now known as (-)-Calanolide B, is present in the latex so that tree need not be felled in order to collect the compound. Calanolide B is in preclinical testing with the National Cancer Institute.

Should either drug prove a commercial success, it would bolster the argument that standing rainforests have the potential to generate benefits beyond timber and agricultural land.

Source: Treehugger

Hopefully you already are aware of the plight of orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra as logging and palm oil plantations continue to rapidly destroy their habitat. The rate of deforestation and habitat loss is so great that some scientists are predicting that the orangutan will be the first great ape to go extinct in modern times. Yale Environment 360 is running a piece on one interesting twist on efforts to help orangutans. There are now so many orphaned babies that there may not be enough remaining habitat to reintroduce them to the wild:

Half as Much Habitat Available Compared to 20 Years Ago

The figures for habitat loss are staggering. In the past 20 years suitable habitat for orangutan reintroduction has been cut by more than 50%, encompassing less than 27,000 square miles today. Perhaps even more startling is that in Sumatra (where about 6,500 orangutan remain in the wild) since 1975 about 90% of original forest cover has been chopped down.

Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com points out that there are currently more than 2,000 orangutans in various rehabilitation centers, but for every one of these at least six more have been killed or captured for the pet trade.

Pet Trade is Manageable, Palm Oil Plantations Not

Butler points out that, for all its faults, the pet trade’s impact on orangutans was manageable. However, palm oil plantations’ impact is not:

Michelle Desilets, executive director of the Orangutan Land Trust, says she started to see the shift about five years ago. Relegated to ever smaller fragments of forest, wild orangutans began to face starvation as their food sources were depleted, forcing them to venture into newly established oil palm plantations where they feed on the young shoots of palms, destroying the tree before it produces any oil seeds.

Viewing the wild orangutans as pests, plantation managers started paying $10 to $20 for each dead orangutan — a strong incentive for a migrant worker.

“Our rescue teams began to be informed of wandering wild orangutans in human settlements,” said Desilets. “We have found orangutans beaten to death with wooden planks and iron bars, butchered by machetes, beaten unconscious and buried alive, and doused with petrol and set alight. Since 2004, more and more orangutans in our centers have been rescued from areas within or near oil palm plantations, and over 90 percent of the infants up to 3 years of age come from these areas.”

For more on the problems facing efforts to rehabilitate and reintroduce orangutans orphaned by palm oil, read: With the Clearing of Forests, Baby Orangutans are Marooned

How to Help Orangutans

So what can someone living literally on the other side of the world do about this? In addition to supporting organizations working with orangutans (such as Orangutan Outreach) one thing that individuals can do is to pressure companies to only purchase sustainable palm oil, or find substitutes for palm oil altogether.

The former option is particularly important, considering that according to WWF a mere 1% of all the palm oil that has been produced under certified sustainable conditions has actually been purchased.

It’s about the best news any zoo can have – Audubon Zoo in New Orleans is celebrating the birth of an
endangered baby Sumatran orangutan!

The baby, a healthy girl name Menari, was born to mom Feliz on June 10, 2009.

Although the baby is active and thriving, Feliz, as a first-time mother, needs assistance caring for her
newborn. Animal staff made the decision to relocate Menari to a nursery at Audubon’s Animal Health Care Center, where the baby is cared for by keepers around-the-clock. Keepers also are running introduction sessions with mom Feliz every day in hopes of re-introducing the baby to the orangutan group soon.

“It’s almost impossible to put a time frame on when the public will be able to see Menari at this point,” said Audubon Zoo vice president and general curator Rick Dietz. “We are making every effort to smooth the way for Menari to be with her family in the orangutan exhibit as soon as possible, but our primary objective right now is the well-being of the baby.”

The name “Menari,” chosen by the baby’s keepers, means “dance” in Indonesian. Orangutans are native to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia. Feliz is twenty years old. She came to Audubon Zoo as a youngster from Brownsville, Texas. The father, Berani, is sixteen years old and came to Audubon from the Miami Zoo.

The most recent orangutan birth at Audubon Zoo was thirteen years ago – Blaze, born in 1996. Blaze shares the exhibit with Berani and Feliz.

“We have a number of baby animals this summer,” said Dietz. “We have a new young giraffe, a couple of babirusa piglets, some Mississippi gopher frog tadpoles and young birds such as great Argus pheasants, Nicobar pigeons and crested screamers – not to mention the baby T-Rex in Audubon’s Dinosaur Adventure!

We’re inviting everyone out to see how many babies they can spot!”

Source: Zooborns

Shaun Tandon, Los Angeles
June 30, 2009

Fears are growing over the welfare of Michael Jackson’s menagerie.

MICHAEL Jackson’s sudden death has left an array of exotic pets orphaned, with some of them unaccounted for and his beloved chimpanzee Bubbles depending on donations.

Bubbles, who slept in Jackson’s bedroom and mastered his moonwalk dance, was a constant companion to the singer in the 1980s but had to be given up when he became too big and aggressive to have around the star’s young family.

Since 2005, Bubbles has lived at the Centre for Great Apes in Florida.

Jackson rescued Bubbles from a Texas medical laboratory. He gave the chimp to animal trainer Bob Dunn’s sanctuary outside Los Angeles after the singer had children.

The Florida centre said Mr Dunn handed in Bubbles and all his other apes in 2005 when he left the business.

Mr Dunn told Britain’s News of the World that Jackson thought of Bubbles as “his first child” and regularly visited while Bubbles was in Mr Dunn’s California preserve.

But the Florida centre said Jackson had not provided financial support for Bubbles and never visited him there.

“All donations for his care have come from the Centre for Great Ape’s supporters,” said centre director Patti Ragan. “We depend on donations in order to care for our animals.”

At the height of his stardom, Jackson amassed a private zoo of giraffes, tigers and other animals at Neverland, his sprawling estate in California.

Nearly all the animals were moved to new homes as Jackson’s personal and financial problems worsened.

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals voiced concern about two of Jackson’s orang-utans sent to a private owner in Connecticut, and reptiles at a roadside zoo in Oklahoma.

PETA’s Lisa Wathne said Jackson’s case showed why wild animals should not be kept as pets. “All too often even people who start with good intentions … don’t have the ability to properly care for these animals,” she said.

“In Michael Jackson’s case, he did apparently run into financial problems that ultimately led to his animals being disbursed to places all over the world. We don’t know where most of them ended up.”

AFP, TELEGRAPH

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/people/stars-death-leaves-bubbles-and-co-in-limbo-20090629-d2hi.html

THIS is the new star that will be looking out at thousands of Suffolk visitors to East Anglia’s biggest zoo.

Visitors to Colchester Zoo can now come and see Tiga the Bornean orangutan in the Orangutan Forest!

Tiga arrived on the June 25 from Twycross Zoo, and is settling well in his new home.

Tiga will be a companion for Rajang, Colchester Zoo’s resident 41 year old male orangutan, and hopefully will become a breeding male in the future when he matures.

He is nearly eight years old and is very active with a cheeky personality, and is already attracting plenty of attention from visitors as he explores his new home!

Initially, the two orangutans will be kept separately, but will be gradually introduced after several weeks under the watchful eyes of Colchester Zoo’s team of primate keepers.

After the sad loss of Djambe, Rajang’s female companion last year, the zoo is delighted that there will once again be two orangutans in Colchester Zoo’s fantastic new development, Orangutan Forest.

Bornean orangutans, along with the slightly smaller Sumatran orangutan, are the only great apes native to Asia, and both species are highly endangered in the wild, with experts predicting that orangutans could be extinct in the wild as early as 2015.

Colchester Zoo’s charity, Action for the Wild, supports the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) and in order to celebrate the construction of a the new Orangutan Forest enclosure at Colchester Zoo, Action for the Wild donated £5,000 to BOS in 2007 and are continuing to support this worthy cause in 2009.