By HUGO PRAYA
Associated Press
2009-09-30
Source: http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1070442&lang=eng_news

Smoke and ash from hundreds of land-clearing fires blanketed skies over large parts of western Indonesia on Wednesday, prompting flight cancellations and health warnings and sending air quality plummeting, officials said.

More than 400 hotspots were burning on the westernmost island of Sumatra and on Kalimantan, the Indonesian side of Borneo island, said Donny Osmon, the head of fire fighting in Jambi province, citing satellite data.

Slash-and-burn practices destroy huge areas of Indonesian forest every summer during the dry season, angering surrounding countries, causing massive economic losses and contributing to the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, the third largest in the world.

The fires are often set to clear land for farming, corporate development or oil palm plantations.

Visibility dropped below 1,200 feet (400 meters) Wednesday after several days of heavy smoke, causing chaos at regional airports. Health warnings were issued in major towns and cities on both islands, Osmon said.

“The haze has become dangerous to people’s health,” he said, adding that many people were wearing face masks.

Air quality in Palangkaraya, in Central Kalimantan province, reached “dangerous” levels, down from “unhealthy” last week, said airport deputy head Usdek Liuthermand.

“The condition is so bad that we were forced to close the airport for safety’s sake,” Liuthermand said. “We will reopen only if the visibility increases to 1,600 meters (one mile),” he said.

Several schools in Palangkaraya opened late or were closed Wednesday after complaints from children and teachers that they were unable to study.

“Children were having problems reading and writing in the choking haze,” said elementary school teacher Nurlaila Sayuti. “The government has to take firm action in handling forest fires.”

Similar conditions were reported in the Sumatran cities of Palembang, Pekanbaru and Lampung.

___

AP reporters Niniek Karmini in Jakarta and Kasparman Piliang in Jambi contributed to this report.

30 Sept 2009 — Because female orangutans don’t get to choose who they mate with, they have instead evolved more subtle strategies to select the father of their offspring, a study published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences reveals.

Near ovulation, females seek out and willingly mate with prime males – those with impressive flanges on the sides of their face – while avoiding lesser males. At times when the risk of conception is low, however, they consent to mate with any male they encounter. This means that even if prime males don’t have more sex than other males, they will still have more offspring.

It is thought that this behavior probably evolved as a result of male orangutans being about twice the size of females, meaning the latter find it hard to say no when it comes to sex. Mothers usually provide all the care for young orangutans and are keen to increase their chances of survival by ensuring they have the strongest genes.

Researchers also suggest that females use sex to protect their young from the risk of infanticide – thought more likely to occur at times when there is instability in a group, such as when a new alpha male takes over. Pregnant females actively solicit sex, especially from prime males, thereby causing confusion about who the baby’s father is. It is thought that males are more likely to be protective of, or at least less likely to harm, a young orangutan they think might be theirs.

Results come from a study in Borneo which involved observing the natural behavior of wild orangutans, as well as collecting urine samples to test the hormone levels of different animals

Source: The Royal Society

By Mark E Harrison, Susan E Page and Suwido H Limin

Uncontrolled fires across Indonesia burn large areas of peatland and create vast palls of smoke on an almost annual basis. This has devastating effects on wildlife, human health, the economy and climate. Yet, more than 10 years after the massive fires of 1997-98 grabbed international headlines, the problem is still far from solved.

This paper is published in Biologist, a fully peer-reviewed journal of the British Institute of Biology (soon to become the Society of Biology). Articles are intended to be authoritative, yet relatively non-technical, in order to appeal to a wide readership. I hope that this format will enhance the paper’s ability to raise publicity for the cause.

Harrison et al 09 Global impact Indonesian forest fires

By Deirdra Funcheon
Tuesday, Sep. 29 2009

It’s been almost 20 years since the notorious “Bangkok Six” incident, when investigators at a Thailand airport intercepted a crate marked “live birds,” only to find that it contained six tightly-packed endangered orangutans destined for Russia from Indonesia. Only two of the orangutans survived.

A Miami primate dealer named Matthew Block — proprietor of World Wide Primates, who’d started his business of raising animals for research while still in high school — eventually pled guilty to charges for his role in the case, paid a $30,000 fine, and was sentenced to 13 months in prison. He then began cooperating with authorities, working as an informant to rope in illegal animal traders. In 1993, he helped arrange the arrest of five Mexican zoo officials who traveled to Miami in hopes of buying a gorilla on the black market. (During that incident, a Fish & Wildlife investigator dressed in an ape suit to fool the zoo guys into a takedown.) Around the same time, he also helped ensnare a Jacksonville dealer who was holding rare Australian cockatoos.

In spite of Block’s work on the side of law enforcement, some animal rights activists have never forgiven him or forgotten him, instead engaging in their own form of retaliation. In 1994, 33 crab-eating macaques were stolen from Block’s property. Last year, intruders cut holes in several monkey cages, letting the animals escape. And this week, the Animal Liberation Front received a communique that activists targeted a Miami Beach house they believed to belong to Block’s wife Brooke. “We punctured 4 tires on a car in the driveway and poured red paint over the car and on the front door of the house,” authors of the communique stated. (Matthew Block, now in his late 40s, is no longer a registered agent for Worldwide Primates; rather, his wife Brooke and mother Gertie are listed officers on the paperwork.)

Matthew Block spoke to New Times briefly, confirming the incident — and clarifying that the vandals missed their target. The house and car, he says, “belong to my 80-year-old mother. This is their third time getting it wrong, and one of those was a firebombing a few years ago. They’re going to end up killing or hurting someone.”

When Block spoke to us last September after intruders released the monkeys, he noted that “These monkeys never lived a day in their lives” out of his company’s care. “They have no clue how to behave in the wild. No clue how to get food and water.” Block said it was cruel to free them — to them let them “sit in the wild and starve to death.” Other primate experts said that the animals can be unpredictable and aggressive, and it was fortunate that the released monkeys did not run into and hurt or maim humans.

Records received from the United States Department of Agriculture in response to a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that World Wide Primates has had its license renewed regularly with few violations. In the years since 2002, inspectors noted a missing tile, a rusted cage, and a note that “In July 2005, non-human primates succumbed to heat exhaustion when HVAC system in Room C failed.” In 2004, investigators noted that an adult male capuchin was housed alone; the law required he be able to see and hear nonhuman primates of his own species.

Perhaps the most revealing detail to be gleaned from the sparse paperwork is that business has been good: In 2003, a year the company bought 319 animals and sold 182, the reported gross income from sales totaled $340,295. In 2007, when the company bought 1123 animals and sold 1270, that figure peaked at more than $5 million.

Block noted that his company imports animals for research purposes but does not conduct any research. Although his line of work remains a topic for ethical debate, Block in turn argued that “these people [the vandals] do not deserve publicity.” Last year he stated, “ethically, the media should not be giving accolades to people who violate federal law.” He added that in the search for the perpetrators, “the FBI is very much involved.” The agency considers animal rights extremism “domestic terror” and in 2006, revisions to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act toughened penalties for related crimes.

Source: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2009/09/monkey_breeder_targeted_by_ani.php

Corruption court bill passed, retains KPK’s right to prosecute

The Indonesian House of Representatives passed Tuesday the much-debated corruption court bill into law, thus laying the legal foundation for a permanent corruption court.

Bowing to public pressure, the new law grants the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) the continued right to prosecute graft cases, as well as maintains the antigraft body’s right to wiretap graft suspects during investigations.

The House had been split over the two contentious issues, with many looking to curtail the powers of the KPK.

The Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that the existing Corruption Court had no legal basis, and gave the House and government until December 2009 to pass a law to justify the court’s continued presence.

Bangkok, 29 September 2009 — Greenpeace today welcomed the Indonesian President’s announcement late last week that he would cut emissions 26% by 2020 (from business as usual) and 41% if the developed world provided finance.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s statement, made at a G20 “working lunch”, but which has only come to light today, is the type of commitment now being seen from a growing number of large developing countries.

“While we still need to see the details of this new Indonesian position, that the world’s third largest emitter is intending to make such large cuts is a very welcome move,” said Paul Winn of Greenpeace international.

We have now seen a clear signal from the world’s four largest developing country emitters: China, India, Brazil and Indonesia, that they are taking action.

“Leaders of the developing world have been ducking their responsibility and justifying it by saying the developing world needed to make strong commitment. Well they have and the onus is now on Obama and company to put the money on the table to help them succeed.”

He stressed that Indonesia’s new policy would need to be carefully scrutinised for exactly how it would be achieved. The first step to making this commitment a reality would be a moratorium on deforestation and peatland destruction in Indonesia.

Greenpeace is calling on developed nations to commit $40 billion a year to end tropical deforestation globally by 2020 – and for Indonesia region (including Malaysia and PNG), Brazil and the Congo by 2015 – through a global forest fund created in Copenhagen.

Ends

Greenpeace contacts in Bangkok

Cindy Baxter +66 8 2334 3915 or +31 646 197 332
Paul Winn +66 8 5332 4795 or 61 407 074 370

Bangkok, 28 September 2009

What: More than a third of remaining natural forests in the Bukit Tigapuluh forest landscape in Sumatra – approximately 170,000 hectares – is about to be cleared and converted for pulp production and plantation development by Asia Pulp & Paper/Sinar Mas Group (APP/SMG), with potentially disastrous impacts on the climate, bio-diversity and forest communities.

If these forests are converted, substantial amounts of CO2 will be released into the atmosphere, local orangutan, tiger and elephant populations would likely become extinct and the Orang Rimba local indigenous communities will lose customary lands and livelihoods.

Under current REDD rules and definitions, the conversion of Bukit Tigapuluh’s unique forest ecosystem would not count as deforestation, and might even be subsidized. To avoid the destruction of Bukit Tigapuluh and countless other valuable forest ecosystems around the world, the international community must adopt a REDD treaty that strongly focuses on the protection of intact natural forests, relies on science-based definitions of deforestation and degradation, protects Indigenous rights and improves governance models, addressing the demand for forest products in Western countries that are driving the destruction.

Who: Pak Didy, Tourism Bureau Jambi Province, (Indonesia), Lafcadio Cortesi, Rainforest Action Network (U.S.), Sean Cadman, The Wilderness Society (Australia)

When: Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 11:30 a.m.

Where: Press conference room (TBD), Bangkok UNFCCC

Why: Bukit Tigapuluh, which stretches across Riau and Jambi provinces in central Sumatra and is the largest remaining dry lowland forest block on the island, is home to forest-dependent local communities including the indigenous tribes of Talang Mamak and Orang Rimba. The landscape is also home to approximately 100 Sumatran orangutans, reintroduced via the Sumatran Orangutan Reintroduction Project, as well as Temara – a Perth Zoo-born orangutan – released into Bukit Tigapuluh in 2006. The forest also houses a quarter of the remaining Sumatran tigers left in the wild, as well as being the exclusive habitat for two Sumatran elephant groups.

A diverse group of stakeholders has come together and is calling on APP/SMG and Indonesia’s government for protection of these and other critical natural forests and peat lands. Because of the lack of climate, community and biodiversity safeguards, private sector companies such as Staples, Target and H&M Group have recently cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars of supply contracts. Leading scientists and semi-government institutions such as IUCN, Australian Orangutan Project and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums have written letters of concern calling on APP and the Indonesian government to act immediately and protect this area.

For further information/interviews, please contact:
Brianna Power, Australian Orangutan Foundation +61 403 904 912
About Australian Orangutan Project
The Australian Orangutan Project (AOP) is a not-for-profit organisation, supporting orangutan conservation, habitat protection and orphan care in order to save the species from extinction. http://www.orangutan.org.au