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At BOS, the ultimate goal is the release of healthy orangutans back into the wild - so it’s always gratifying to be able to provide good news about just such an event - the first translocation program of 2008. BOS transported 25 orangutans to freedom in an area of protected forest in Central Kalimantan. These orangutans were not part of the regular rehabilitation program at Nyaru Menteng.

They were wild orangutans who had been rescued from areas of rainforest that had been devastated by the establishment oil-palm plantations, forcing them to go in search of food wherever it could be found.

They had been brought into Nyaru Menteng at various stages during the past year. On arrival their condition was assessed and they were medically checked to ensure that they were fit enough to be relocated to their natural habitat at the earliest opportunity. The area in which the release was to take place had to be carefully chosen. The one finally chosen, a large valley, about 70,000 hectares in size, is in the interior of Central Kalimantan, along the Banana River - an appropriate name for the release of a group of orangutans, although it was not, we believe, actually named after the fruit!

It’s an area which is safe from hunting due to its inaccessibility. The rivers are full of big rocks, making it impossible for the local people to use boats, and the few landings visible at the mouth of the river look as though they had been deserted years ago. No large settlements are evident along the river banks, and there are no villages close by. It is also within the boundaries of the “Heart of Borneo”, which would offer an increased opportunity for conservation management. Since these orangutans had not been part of our rehabilitation program, it wasn’t necessary for the area in which they were released to be free of a wild population.

This part of Central Kalimantan has always been considered to be well within the historical range of orangutans, and although there are still a few of them in the forests here, there are no substantial breeding populations.

It’s estimated that one orangutan per square kilometre, maybe even more, could easily be supported here, since the lowland forests along the Banana River would be likely to provide a fair amount of food, and the network of small rivers indicates the existence of a number of fruiting trees.

The group of orangutans who left Nyaru Menteng on that morning in June consisted of 14 males - nine adults and five sub-adults, and 15 females, one of whom was Pika, a baby of two-and-a-half years, with her mother, Mama Pika. They were accompanied by Lone Droscher Nielsen, a paramedic, two orangutan caretakers, a communications officer, a doctor, two members of a BBC camera crew and two representatives of the BKSDA (Indonesian Agency for Conservation of Natural Resources).

For the first leg of their journey, the orangutans were settled into their individual cages and flown by Cessna, eight at a time, from the nearby Palangka Raya airport to a transit point - the operation taking two days to complete. Here they were put into large individual holding cages, similar to the ones in which they had been kept at the Center. They seemed to have taken their first flight well - despite being awake during the entire 50-minute trip - and spent the next day resting, while the translocation team members were taken to the release site via helicopter to co-ordinate activities in the field.

On the following day, the first five orangutans were transferred to their transit cages for the 30-minute helicopter flight to the release site. Any change in weather, such as strong winds or rain, could result in disruption to the schedule, and some low, dense, ground fog did indeed delay their departure. At around 11:00 am, however, the helicopter finally took off– four cages of precious cargo suspended beneath it. Mama Pika and her baby were amongst this group, which also included Otong, Yoyon and Ardi.

The second group - Keray, Nelly, Mustapa and Difta - also had their departure delayed, this time by a heavy downpour, and had to wait until 3:00 pm for their flight.

“It must have been slightly petrifying for these wild animals to wake up hanging under a helicopter, high over the canopy of their new home,” says Lone.

“Though they are in transit cages and cannot see much, they certainly must feel the movement and hear the noise of the helicopter. However, when the cage is opened, they rush out as if nothing has happened, and quickly climb into the nearest tree. Some of them are still slightly drugged, and might stagger around a bit before disappearing into the forest, but one thing is for sure - all of them will turn around, once in safety, and have a look at us, as if they want to thank us for giving them this second chance in life.”

Good weather the following day meant that Devsing, Chelsea, Arimbi, Chris, Jimmy and Pangit were able to leave on schedule, at around 9:00 am, followed at noon by Senny, Dion, Siwi, Bojeng and Leli.

On the final day, the weather turned again, but by 11:00 am, the final four orangutans, Mapak, Yanti, Odah and Gromik, also found themselves on their way to freedom.

At a future date, field researchers and primatologists will carry out a nest survey, which will provide information on how widely the newly released orangutans have spread out, living as nature intended, and making their valuable contribution to both the ecosystem of the rainforests and the survival of their species.

“Everyone at Nyaru Menteng is so very happy to be able to give these orangutans another chance in life,” Lone says, “and you can be sure that we’ll continue to save the lives of orangutans as long as we are able to.”

Shocking Choice by John McCain

WASHINGTON– Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

“Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.

“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.

“This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil.”

Source: The Jakarta Post

Bintan regency administration secretary Azirwan on Monday was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for giving Rp 2.25 billion (US$247,500) in bribes to lawmakers for a forest conversion permit.

The Corruption Court found Azirwan guilty of bribing legislator Al Amin Nur Nasution so the House of Representatives would allow the forest conversion, which was to open land for the regent’s new capital, early this year.

Al Amin is a member of the House Commission IV, which oversees forestry, agriculture and fisheries. The lawmaker, who has denied his involvement in the crime, is currently on trial at the same court.

Azirwan said he had not decided whether to appeal the decision. The court gave him seven days to make up his mind.

The court’s verdict was lower than the three-year imprisonment demanded by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors.

The panel of judges said the mitigating factors lowering the sentence were that the defendant admitted and regretted his crime, he was cooperative during the trial and that he had served more than 28 years as a civil servant.

The PETA documentary “Show Business Is No Business for Great Apes” challenges filmmakers and the American Humane Assn.

By Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Source: LA Times

I generally don’t want to be in any club that includes Pamela Anderson, which is part of the reason I’m often skeptical about PETA causes.

That said, I was horrified when I saw the latest documentary from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, about great apes in film and TV. The video was narrated by Anjelica Huston, who recently sent it to all the studios, along with a letter asking them to stop using the animals.

We’re talking primarily chimps, who have appeared in commercials and movies such as “Project X,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Evan Almighty,” “Planet of the Apes” and, of course, Clyde the kiss-blowing orangutan in “Every Which Way but Loose.”

According to “Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People” by famed primatologist Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, the original “Clyde” was trained with a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. He was viciously beaten the day before filming started to make him more docile. Near the end of filming the sequel “Any Which Way You Can,” the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set, brought back to the training facility and beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2 -foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.

You’d think that 30 years would improve the lot of chimps. In some cases it has, as filmmakers like Peter Jackson are opting for animatronic apes or actors in ape suits. At least two high-profile trainers have been pressured out of the chimp business in the last few years by lawsuits or protesters. Yet some persist. This summer ” Speed Racer” became one of the only films in recent history to earn an “unacceptable” rating from the American Humane Assn., the group that monitors the use of animals in films.

Now there are certainly moviegoers who will argue it was they who were mistreated by the Wachowski brothers’ candy-colored box-office bomb, but at least consumers weren’t physically manhandled. According to the AHA website, two chimps were used to portray the character of Chim-Chim (who performed such feats as driving a golf cart in the movie), and a trainer hit a chimp during a training session in front of a representative of the AHA. (Warner Bros declined to comment.)

According to PETA spokesman Lisa Lange, the organization had written to producer Joel Silver asking that the studio refrain from using a real chimp in the film, but had received a letter back from Warner Bros. stating, “We respect your viewpoint, but we also respect the vision of the filmmaker and decided to use live animals.”

Chimps are a lot like child actors, though their fate is often worse than ending up robbing convenience stores. According to the PETA documentary “Show Business Is No Business for Great Apes,” getting a baby chimp away from its mother isn’t easy, and the mom “must be tricked, sedated or forcibly restrained when the infants are pulled from them . . . and this cruel practice leaves lifelong emotional scars.”

TRAINERS need to get the chimps early, because after the age of 8 or so, the animals are too strong to be used safely in showbiz. But chimps can live to be 60 years old. And it costs $10,000 a year to feed and care for a chimp. There’s an overpopulation of captive chimps and a dearth of sanctuaries for the primates. According to PETA, too many former screen stars end up in squalor in subpar retirement spots. They point to Chubbs, who played a cadet trainee in Tim Burton’s 2001 film “Planet of the Apes” and ended up living amid garbage, maggots and feces at a roadside attraction in Amarillo, Texas.

AHA’s guidelines recommend that filmmakers opt for synthetic apes, for the same reasons as PETA. Karen Rosa, the director of the AHA’s Film and Television Unit, argues that “chimps should be with their mothers for the first five years,” and doesn’t believe the animals should be made to perform before the age of 18 months. She adds that some trainers go so far as to breed chimps willing to give up their babies, so a human trainer can jump in as a surrogate parent.

Given their limited resources, the AHA only monitors a handful of films shot overseas and only supervises animals during filming, not when they are training for films. “We’re a nonprofit. We’re not staffed to do that kind of comprehensive oversight,” says Rosa. “If we are witnessing good care, that’s our focus. To make the assumption that when they leave the set, they will treat the animals differently is not something we do. Animals need consistency. If you’re treating [an animal] in training with positive rewards, then you’re not going to come to the set and beat it with a stick and expect the same results.”

Yet, PETA says, the training is often where the great apes get brutalized. AHA is famous for its closing-credit disclaimer, stating “No animals were harmed in the making of this film.”

“With great apes, we’re asking them to add that the AHA is not present for the training of great apes prior to the animals being on the set,” says Lange. “People have a false sense that because the AHA is on set during a movie, that disclaimer means that everything is OK. It’s not.”

In 2002-03, primatologist Sarah Baeckler conducted a 14-month undercover investigation of Amazing Animal Actors, then a prime chimp facility, on behalf of a consortium of chimpanzee advocates including Goodall. “It was really rough,” says Baeckler, now executive director of a chimp sanctuary near Seattle. “I saw a lot of physical violence. A lot of punching and kicking, and the use of the ‘ugly stick,’ a sawed-off broom handle, to beat the chimps. The youngest I met were 18 months old and were pretty similar to an 18-month-old human child. They were being kicked in the face and punched in the head and subject to all kinds of physical abuse to keep them paying attention and in line with the trainer.”

Baeckler does not “think it has gotten better” since her investigation, and says it’s perfectly plausible that a trainer would treat an animal well in public and mistreat it behind the scenes. “It’s very similar to an abusive human relationship. The bottom line is: [Chimps] are super strong and super curious and super smart, and the amount of control that the trainers require to keep them paying attention and not misbehaving — it’s too much to be able to do with love and kisses. The way the trainers are able to control them is behind the scenes; they have this very brutal relationship including discipline when they misbehave, and random violence without any seeming provocation. That keeps their attention on the trainer.”

Baeckler’s consortium later sued Amazing Animal Actors and as part of the settlement, its proprietor, Sid Yost, agreed to retire his chimps. Yost did not respond to a call or e-mail. In fact, I called and e-mailed five trainers who work with chimps or have worked with them in the past, but no one answered my inquiries.

The practice of using apes in Hollywood could be eradicated fairly easily with legislation, or by agreements with the trainers or studios to refrain. PETA followed up Huston’s letter with a request to meet with the studios, but only DreamWorks, MGM and Universal agreed. Lange says PETA has decided to make this species a priority because “the violence begins at birth . . . and [the chimps] live so long.”

Watching footage of baby chimps right before they’re ripped from their mothers is upsetting for any parent. And the chimp can’t just get a prescription for Prozac or an hour of talk therapy. Entertainment seems a paltry excuse for mistreating animals.

All I can say is: Next time I see a chimp on screen, I just hope it’s made of pixels.

Source: The Jakarta Post - August 22, 2008

By Ahmad Maryudi, Goettingen, Germany

If you had the chance to see the documentary movie Timber Mafia released by Journeyman Pictures in 2002, you would have some idea of the massive scale of illegal logging in Indonesia.

Although efforts have been made to crack down on illegal logging in Indonesia, it appears the problem is getting worse. It is hard to get accurate data on its magnitude, because there are no accurate records on it.

Estimates indicate that approximately 70 percent of timber sourced from the country is illegally harvested, amounting to a massive 50 million cubic meters. A high-ranking government official said the annual loss from illegal logging accounts for between US$600 and $1,500 million.

This accounts for over 1.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, as much as the contribution of “legal” forest products to the GDP. This loss is only assessed on the royalty that would have been paid if the timber had been legally harvested. Therefore, the total financial loss is much larger.

What are the underlying causes of illegal logging and how can we deal with it? Some analysts have mentioned market failure as a main cause. Markets for illegally-logged timber are so widely available, even in environmentally-concerned regions, that the legal markets can hardly function alongside the illegal ones!

The international marketing problem is undeniable and apparently beyond government control. While expecting improvements in global markets, we should also focus on government failures in dealing with illegal logging.

Domestically, it is evident that illegal forestry activities are strongly linked with underdeveloped regulatory frameworks and lack of enforcement capacity by governmental agencies, compounded by corruption and collusion between illegal loggers and officials in forestry and state agencies. It is difficult to isolate these factors as they are interdependent.

From a policy perspective, some current regulations are thought to have encouraged illegal logging. These includes poor taxation and levy systems for timber products and poor regulation of forestry concessions, including soft penalties for violations.

Others point to corruption and collusion involving forestry officials. Although this is hard to prove at both institutional and individual levels, few would deny that it happens.

Given the trend to decentralization, local governments have become more influential, including in the granting of logging permits. There have been strong pointers to corruption and collusion in respect of the granting of logging concessions.

Evidence shows that in many cases illegal forestry activities are supported by state officials, including forestry officials and police, as well as military personnel.

Not so long ago, some middle-level forestry and police officers in a timber rich region were brought to Jakarta allegedly for supporting illegal logging. One might argue that these reflected individual or personal actions, but there were also institutional failures to control individual actions.

Unfortunately, efforts to crack down on illegal logging are further hindered by poor law enforcement. The limited number of forest rangers the forestry ministry can deploy are not enabled to proceed on the illegal cases they have discovered. Experience show that in many illegal logging cases the alleged suspects have been left unnapprehended, untried and unpunished.

To control illegal logging at domestic level the government can take the option to improve forestry industry regulations. More importantly, the regulations should provide sanctions against violations. Illegal loggers and those working with them can ignore the law with impunity because it is not backed by convincing sanctions.

Since illegal logging involves international trade, the government should be actively engaged in bilateral and multilateral agreements within and across regions, involving both producer and consumer nations. This should include exchanges of information on timber production, consumption and trade and collaboration on law enforcement between police forces at international level.

To sum up, Indonesia clearly suffers from illegal logging. While circumstances in timber markets also contribute to encouraging illegal logging, to a large extent the underlying causes are linked to governmental failures.

Therefore, the government needs to make substantial efforts to deal with the problem. Options for positive strategies include reform of the national forestry policy framework as well as promoting intergovernmental agreements against illegal logging.

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Gadjah Mada and a PhD candidate at Goettingen University, Germany. This is his personal opinion.

Visit the source of this article to see photos and learn more: Telegraph.co.uk

Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop environmental catastrophe.

By Jonathan Franklin r

Sebastián Piñera, one of the richest men in Chile, has a CV that includes introducing credit cards to his country and many large-scale property developments. Now he has added what every chic millionaire needs - his own private ecosystem.

Brazil can preserve Amazon rainforest without outside help, says president Johan Eliasch, Gordon Brown consultant, fined for illegal Amazon logging Parque Tantauco, which Piñera created in 2005, is on one of South America’s largest islands, Chiloé, off the coast of Patagonia.

Piñera bought the land and immediately set about protecting the offshore habitat of blue whales and the inland virgin forests.

Pulling out a map of the park, Piñera explains his plan, tracing his finger over a trekking route that will be connected by rustic cabins.

‘We have been buying all the land around us. We started with 110,000 acres and now we have 150,000,’ he says. ‘I want my children and grandchildren to remember me for making one more million? No! So I now have many projects like this.’

While yachts and jets marked the status of last century’s super rich, today the stylish accessory for millionaires is their very own ecosystem.

From Patagonia to Montana, hundreds of thousands of acres are being bought by wealthy businessmen and placed in private charities, conservation trusts or handed over to governments as a gift.

Johan Eliasch, chairman of Head, the ski and sporting goods manufacturer, and the grandson of a Swedish property developer, has taken his business skills and invested them in a new industry - Amazon Forest conservation.

Eliasch, who has a personal fortune estimated at £360m, has bought 400,000 acres in the Brazilian Amazon, near the river town of Manicore.

Deforestation, argues Eliasch, causes more carbon emissions annually than transportation, yet is often overlooked.

In his parcel of land, Eliasch estimates that some 80m tons of carbon are trapped in the forest - about the same amount the entire Swedish population will produce over the next 15 years at current rates (53m tons per year).

‘The key to saving the Amazon and the rest of the world’s great rainforests is actually very simple: just put a fair price on the role they play in providing a quarter of the world’s oxygen, a fifth of fresh water and 60 per cent of its species,’ declares Eliasch.

‘I truly believe that with their values as a carbon store at last being recognised, we will see mass deforestation halted in five years.’

Eliasch’s interest in the Amazon came about from a concern that one of the effects of global warming was its destruction of the European ski season due to the lack of a critical component - snow.

‘The Swedish winters and summers hold the most enduring memories for me. Now when I am back in Stockholm in November, it is difficult to imagine being able to ski to school. I think that is a tragedy,’ he remarked.

The efforts by Eliasch to protect the rainforest have hit a nerve among some people in Brazil who are suspicious of foreigners coming in with plans to invest in the Amazon.

Eliasch, who admits that shutting down sawmills and putting hundreds of workers out of a job is controversial, insists that hacking down the rainforest is a wildly inefficient use of natural resources.

‘Once timber is cut, there is little that can be done with the land that is is sustainable,’ argues Eliasch. ‘Timber extraction provides big profits at the expense of local communities.’

‘Providing communities with unfettered access to harvest a forest that is protected in perpetuity provides better and more reliable incomes.’

Still, some people remain unconvinced, and it might be years before Eliasch is able to fully utilise his business acumen within the complex world of conservation.

‘There are pitfalls everywhere,’ says Evan Bowen-Jones of the conservation body Fauna & Flora International. ‘In some countries it is possible to buy large chunks of lands and preserve it, and in other areas it is impossible.’

Bowen-Jones cautions that entering the world of large-scale conservation requires patience, and he strongly suggests consulting experienced individuals who have already been through the process.

Working with local groups or, better yet, being invited by local environmental groups is another key to success, he says.

‘With the current pace of biodiversity loss posed by climate change, we are going to have to stretch the methods available to us and that is going to bring in the wealthy individuals,’ says Bowen-Jones.

‘If they [wealthy donors] bring the right attitude to the table, then there is a good chance for success.’

‘It is pretty hard for a country to turn down a gift of 300,000 hectares [740,000 acres],’ says Douglas Tompkins, 65, the American-born founder of Esprit and The North Face.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Tompkins amassed a multi-million dollar fortune. He lived in a huge estate in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighbourhood and had a world-renowned art collection.

Then he read a book on deep ecology, the philosophy pioneered by Norwegian Arne Naess, who calls for a radical re-evaluation of man’s relationship with the planet.

Tompkins was an instant convert. He sold his estate, the art and everything else, then moved to the remote wilds of Patagonia.

Since 1992, Tompkins has spent nearly £110m buying or organising the purchase of around 25 properties covering 2.2m acres in Chile and Argentina.

Once purchased, the land is placed under strict environmental protection by its new owner. Tompkins has even coined a phrase for this movement - wildlands philanthropy.

When Tompkins met someone with the same philosophy and her own pile of money - Kristi McDivitt, the former CEO of the Patagonia Clothing company - they began to focus their business acumen on building coalitions of funders, environmentalists and governments to create national parks.

‘Spend your money on land conservation,’ says McDivitt. ‘To restore a creek is patriotic in my mind. Restoring the land in any form is a patriotic act.’

This eco-power couple have now created two national parks - Parque Nacional Corcovado in Chile and Parque Nacional Monte León in Argentina.

Another two are being finalised, with a total area of close to two million acres. At the centre of Tompkins’ conservation efforts is Chile’s Parque Pumalin, a pristine wooded ecosystem that includes volcanoes, old growth forests and hidden hot springs. The park’s 740,000 acres are off limits to all development except small-scale enterprises.

‘I fundamentally believe in national parks,’ Tompkins said. ‘I don’t believe in private parks. I believe that nations do best and have done best when they really value their parklands and areas that are off limits to development.’

Hansjörg Wyss, one of Europe’s richest men, agrees. After amassing a fortune estimated at £4,200m from his position of CEO of Synthes - a company that produces artificial spinal discs and nails for repairing broken bones - Wyss has tackled a far larger reconstruction project: the wild areas of the American West.

Through The Wyss Foundation, he has donated millions of dollars to preserve wild lands in Utah and Montana.

As chairman of the board at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a grassroots conservation group in the American southwest, Wyss has instituted a corporate structure that includes a £3.5m cash surplus, investments in stocks and mutual funds and an £800,000 office building in Salt Lake City.

In order to save thousands of acres in the Rocky Mountains of Montana from development, Wyss bankrolled a simple solution; he offered to buy up the mineral rights from the mining companies.

Thanks to Wyss’s understanding of corporate America, the Foundation had discovered a strategy for effectively paying the oil and gas companies to leave the area.

In that Montana battle, The Wyss Foundation was an early funder and longtime proponent of the ‘buy ‘em out’ strategy.

Even investment bankers Goldman Sachs have caught the bug. In 2003, Goldman Sachs received 670,000 acres of forests in southern Chile and Argentina as the result of a bankruptcy settlement.

‘It was part of a large package of distressed debt. We started asking, what do we do with a million acres of forest at the end of the earth? We had to get out an atlas,’ laughs Lawrence Linden, an advisory director to Goldman Sachs.

He continues: ‘As an investment bank, we know what to do with shopping malls and apartment complexes. But an ecosystem in Tierra del Fuego? So we called in The Nature Conservancy to study the land and they came back with the conclusion that it was actually a very valuable piece of land from an environmental point of view.’

Today the Goldman Sachs land is a vast tract of wilderness and is home to the guanaco, a llama-like animal that roams the forests. It also has an endowment of around £9m.

“We didn’t want to be a burden for taxpayers. This is not just a question of preserving a pristine wilderness,’ says Pete Rose, a Goldman Sachs spokesman. ‘This is about using 21st-century science to preserve a pristine wilderness.’

Across Europe, eco-barons have also invested heavily in land conservation.

Dutch businessman Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, who died in 2006, was a leading figure in the movement. From his 82,000-acre estate in Scotland - which he proudly advertised as public lands - van Vlissingen managed supermarket chains, energy companies and investment trusts. His passion was Africa’s beleaguered national parks.

In barely two years, Vlissingen poured millions of dollars into the then incomplete Marakele National Park in South Africa, a job that would have taken at least 10 years without his funding. Today Marakele is part of a far bigger park system and is a healthy home to African wildlife, including elephant, white and black rhinoceros, buffalo, hyena, cheetah, wild dog, giraffe and eland.

To consolidate his philosophy, Vlissingen helped create the African Parks Foundation, an NGO that continues to reinforce the infrastructure and funding for national parks in Africa.

Before his death, van Vlissingen was widely considered the richest man in Scotland, and with tens of thousands of acres, the country’s biggest landowner.

But van Vlissingen refused that title, ‘You can’t own a place like this. It belongs to the planet,’ he once said. ‘I’m only the guardian.’

The full version of this article appears in the latest issue of First Life the British Airways magazine from Cedar Communications.

Taib implicated in Indonesian timber scam

By Tony Thien

Indonesian logs are being illegally imported into Sarawak and re-exported as local timber to other countries, including China, Taiwan and Japan, according to an Indonesian newspaper report.

In the Aug 14 edition of the Tribun Pontianak, the Pontianak-based Indonesian language daily also implicated chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and Hardwood Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned unit of state agency Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corporation (STIDC).

“The good name of the chief minister and that of the government-owned company have been marred by the report,” Ng Kim Ho, PKR Sarawak state chief told Malaysiakini.

Ng said PKR will lodge a report with the Anti Corruption Agency on the matter. According to him, the Tribun Pontianak report was serious enough to warrant immediate investigation by the authorities here, especially since Indonesia and Malaysia have an existing agreement prohibiting the illegal export of logs.

“Let the relevant authorities carry out an immediate and thorough investigation,” said Ng, who is also assemblyperson for Padungan.

The front-page news report was accompanied by a chart detailing how logs were being transported illegally from the forests in Ketapang and how they were being shipped out of West Kalimantan to two places. The names of some middlemen purportedly involved in the scam were also mentioned.

According to the report, several individuals were charged in an Indonesian court for complicity in illegal timber trade, including the forest controller for the area, a M Darwis. The report said Darwis admitted to receiving bribe money from the individuals in exchange for allowing the logs to be iilegally taken out of Ketapang.

The forest controller told the court the bribe money amounted to between Rp 10 million and Rp 40 million for each shipment of between 800 and 1,000 cubic metres of timber.

About 30 shipments of illegal logs worth some Rp2.16 trillion (about RM750,000) were being taken out either by land or sea across to the East Malaysian state every month.
NGOs go undercover

An Indonesian-based NGO together with a UK-based NGO investigating the illegal timber trade in Indonesia had gone undercover to Sarawak, where they traced the eventual destination of the logs.

The name of Hardwood Sdn Bhd was implicated, although Tribun Pontianak erroneously reported the firm was owned by �the governor of Sarawak’ Abdul Taib Mahmud.

The news report also highlighted a dialogue the European Commission had in Kuching with various stake-holders and NGOs on issues of the legality of the timber being exported to Europe.

The legality issue is tied to, among other things, the sources of the timber and respect for the rights of indigenuous groups living on the land from which the timber is extracted.

Malaysiakini understands some of the logs end up being processed by local industries, which would otherwise face a shortage because of an increase in manufacturing activities and also because Sarawak still allowed the export of timber. Up to 40 percent of the total annual production of round logs is exportable.

Timber is one of Sarawak’s main earners accounting for several billions of ringgits in export revenue each year.

Source: http://www.rengah.c2o.org/news/article.php?identifer=de0626t

The Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens in Sanford is gearing up for an $11 million Sumatran Swamp Forest project, featuring two new exhibits that will open during the next two years.

Zoo CEO Joe Montisano wants to break ground on a $3.2 million Sumatran tiger exhibit by the end of this year, with work taking about eight months to complete.

Plans call for getting a pair of tigers from another U.S. zoo or facility, breeding them and eventually having four. “It’s entirely feasible to have the tigers on the property by 2009,” Montisano said.

The zoo also will start building an orangutan exhibit next year and open it in 2010 with six individuals.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2008/08/25/story5.html

Orangutans beware. These guys are gunning for you…. Take cover! ~ Rich

Faces of Death: Puru Kumaran (left) and Velayuthan Tan at the briefing.

Subang Jaya: IJM Plantations Bhd plans to invest RM600mil in capital expenditure to expand its Indonesian operations.

Chief executive officer and managing director Velayuthan Tan said the investment would be staggered over six to seven years.

“So far, we have spent RM50mil, mainly for land acquisition. We have signed three agreements with Indonesian parties to cultivate oil palm at three locations in East Kalimantan totalling about 33,000ha,” he said after the company AGM and EGM yesterday.

IJM Plantations, one of the latest Malaysian companies to venture into Indonesia, established nurseries there in March while field planting is targeted to start early next year.

With its latest acquisition, the plantation company has a total landbank of about 62,000ha.

IJM Plantations owns about 30,000ha in Sabah, which is mostly used up. According to its 2008 annual report, 62% are prime trees, 28% young trees and the balance immature oil palm.

On its earlier plan to launch a 30,000-tonne biodiesel module this year, Tan said the project had been deferred.

“We are very cautious about this venture. We want to wait for the right price and moment to embark on biodiesel,” he said.

“I wish I had a crystal ball,” Tan quipped when asked on the price trend of crude palm oil (CPO).

He said during the peak season in October and November when supply was high, CPO prices would typically be low while during the monsoon, prices would be high.

Although that had been the trend in past years, many industry players and analysts had been proven wrong when CPO prices rallied over the past few months.

Meanwhile, Tan was upbeat on the company’s prospects for the current financial year ending March 31, 2009 due to high CPO prices.

General manager (corporate affairs and finance) Puru Kumaran said IJM Plantations had had a good financial year ended March 31, 2008 when CPO prices averaged about RM2,000 per tonne.

Source: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/8/22/business/1861417&sec=business

He expects the company to continue doing well as CPO prices were still higher than 12 months ago.

By Michael Brune
Please visit the source: The Huffington Post

In the end, climate change made us quit.

On most days, we’re like any other card-carrying, food-conscious environmentalists. My wife and I shop at our local natural grocery store, dutifully selecting locally grown, organic produce. We planted fruit trees a few years ago, our summer vegetable garden is thriving, and we generally do what we can to make Michael Pollan proud.

But every now and then, late at night, we get a little wild. Often to the accompaniment of John Stewart, we’ll pull the blinds down, tip-toe past our sleeping daughter, reach into the darkest recesses of our cabinets, and pull out something sinful. My personal weakness is for cookies and chocolates. My wife is more the pretzels and chips type.

That was before we learned that palm oil - a common ingredient in many of our favorite munchies, not to mention soaps, cosmetics and biofuel - is one of the biggest causes of rainforest destruction and a prime accelerator of climate change.

Throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and now South America as well, millions of acres of tropical rainforests are slashed and burned every year to make way for massive palm oil plantations. Gone are some of the most biologically diverse, carbon-absorbing ecosystems on the planet, which are home to orangutans, tigers, Sumatran rhinos and other endangered species - all replaced by endless rows of palm trees. The draining of peatlands and rampant deforestation has catapulted Indonesia to its status as the world’s third-highest greenhouse gas emitter, trailing only China and the United States. It’s a humanitarian nightmare as well: more than five million indigenous people in Indonesia alone are expected to be evicted from their lands by 2010 to make way for palm plantations.

Much of this palm oil makes its way to the United States, where the palm oil trade is driven by the “ABC’s of rainforest destruction,” giant agribusiness companies Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge and Cargill.

Through late spring and early summer, my organization, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), mobilized hundreds of volunteers to research where palm oil could be found on the shelves of American grocery stores. The news was mixed.

The bad news is that palm oil is nearly everywhere. Palm is used to produce everything from Cheez-Its, Oreos and Mrs. Fields cookies to Pop Tarts, Cool Whip and Ivory Soap. We found palm oil in surprising places, such as Whole Foods-branded products and Newman’s O’s. It’s in Twinkies, Twizzlers, Milky Way bars, even Girl Scout cookies.

The good news is that there are alternatives. As Glenn Hurowitz opined in the Los Angeles Times:

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.

Can we have our cake and our forests too? One step to take is to simply not buy from the companies that came up on RAN’s research list. That’s a decent start, but if consumers act collectively, we can challenge some of America’s most well-known food companies to make much deeper change.

Last week, RAN issued letters to more than 300 different companies, asking them to join us to protect rainforests and fight climate change by finding sustainable alternatives to the palm oil in their products. At the same time, more than 2,000 citizens across the country went to their local grocery stores to plaster stickers reading “Warning: Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction” on any products that contained palm oil. Online, we generated more than 1.3 million emails to those same companies, sent by people who, like many of us, probably enjoy the occasional late night snack, but aren’t wild about the accompanying rainforest destruction. Here’s what Fortune magazine had to say about it.

In 2008, we shouldn’t have to explain to Cargill, Keebler, or any other company that it’s not right to displace indigenous communities and chop down rainforests, but we must. To understand the pervasiveness of this problem, and to educate and pressure the companies that are putting palm oil on our shelves, stop by TheProblemWithPalmOil.org, take action, and let us know what you think.

Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s and other U.S. food producers come under attack as demand for vegetable oil made from palm trees soars.

By Marc Gunther, senior writer
Please visit the source of this article: Fortune

(Fortune) — What do Oreo cookies made by Nabisco (KFT, Fortune 500), Cheez-It crackers from Kellogg’s (K, Fortune 500) or General Mills’ (GIS, Fortune 500) Fiber One Chewy Bars have to do with global warming and the destruction of tropical rainforests? A lot, say environmental activists.

The link between the supermarket shelf, climate change and shrinking rainforests is palm oil, a controversial ingredient that may now be the most widely-traded vegetable oil in the world.

Here’s the problem: Demand for palm oil, which is found in soaps and cosmetics as well as food, has more than doubled in the last decade as worldwide food consumption has soared. Farmers, in turn, are expanding their plantations, burning forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, where nearly all of the palm oil imported to the United States originates. Deforestation is the primary reason that Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions are the third-highest in the world.

The Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are all campaigning against palm oil. (You can find their arguments here and here and here and here.) Last week, RAN asked about 2,000 volunteers to sneak into food stores across the United States and attach stickers to products made with palm oil.

“Warning!,” the stickers said. “May Contain Rainforest Destruction.”

The targets of the RAN campaign are three global agricultural firms that grow or import palm oil: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500), Cargill and Bunge (BG). The goal of last week’s stunt was to get the attention of consumer-goods companies, who are being asked to look into their sourcing of palm oil.

“We’re working our way down the food chain,” explained Mike Brune, the executive director of RAN. “Most customers won’t want rainforest destruction and climate change in every mouthful of cookies or crackers, so our plan is to start with the most prominent brands. Once we get some of the top brands on our side, we’ll use the power of the pocketbook to convince the ‘A,B,C’s’ (ADM, Bunge and Cargill) that destroying rainforests and increasing climate change isn’t smart - for business or the planet.”

The agribusiness companies say they are doing their best to buy palm oil that is produced with minimal harm to the environment. All are participants in a partnership, formed by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever (UN), called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO, which is setting standards for palm-oil cultivation.

Said Mark Klein, a Cargill spokesman, by e-mail: “We are currently working towards having all of our company-owned plantations officially RSPO-certified as quickly as possible in 2008.” You can read more about Cargill’s position here.

The trouble is, critics say, the RSPO principles as they are now written are vague, don’t prevent the destruction of rainforests, and are not well-enforced. What’s more, only a handful of palm plantations have been certified to date by RSPO.

“There’s currently no palm oil in the world that can be proven to be sustainable,” said Leila Salazar-Lopez, who leads RAN’s agribusiness campaign. The growing use of palm oil in biofuels has made the problem even more urgent.

Caught in the middle of the controversy are the consumer brands. A handful of companies have already made efforts to buy palm oil that is responsibly grown. The Body Shop says that it gets its palm oil from an organic producer in Columbia. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a small firm that makes organic soaps, says that it sources all of its palm oil from small growers in Ghana.

There’s precedent for bigger brands to push their suppliers to do better. Several years ago, after Greenpeace attacked McDonald’s (MCD, Fortune 500) for buying soy from the Amazon and contributing to deforestation, the fast-food giant persuaded Cargill and Bunge to stop buying soy from newly-cleared areas while the parties come up with a longer-term conservation plan, which is still in the works.

John Buchanan of Conservation International, which works with Bunge and Cargill, says those companies are trying to improve their practices. “I see them as part of the solution,” he said. But he agrees with the Rainforest Action Network that buyers of palm oil need to more actively seek out responsible sources. “It’s really important for the market to step up and create demand.”

The World Wildlife Fund’s Jason Clay, author of the an authoritative book called World Agriculture and the Environment, says that, instead of cutting and burning forests to make way for palm plantations, farmers should be encouraged to grow the crop on already cleared land.

“Global production could be doubled by planting palm trees on degraded areas of Borneo,” Clay said. “The advantage is that not a tree would have to be cut.”

Louis Prima is for many people the man most associated with orangutans– but they may not even know it! Anyone who’s ever seen Walt Disney’s “Jungle Book” knows Prima’s voice– even if they don’t know Prima by name.

Ollie Johnston, the Disney animator who brought King Louie to life, recently died at 95. ~ Rich

Here’s the clip:

He put the world on to swing: Trumpeter who blazed through New Orleans, Hollywood, Vegas unhonored

By Jerry Fink

It’s time to give Louis Prima his due.

Actor Bruce Dern has a Las Vegas street named for him, for Pete’s sake. So does Ben Johnson. Neither had his name on Vegas marquees or set the neon nights ablaze with music.

But no street honors Prima, who created the classic songs “Sing, Sing, Sing” and “Just a Gigolo.”

No star on the Las Vegas Walk of Fame recognizes the trumpeter who pumped life into the Vegas lounges during the ’50s with his boisterous showmanship. There’s no star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame despite his film and radio successes, nor does he have a spot in the rock, blues or jazz halls of fame despite his crossover music appeal.

One of the world’s great entertainers, who’s synonymous with Las Vegas, has no statues here or anywhere else. No plaques. No postage stamps.

Years ago he was inducted into Steve Cutler’s Casino Hall of Fame Museum at the Tropicana, but the museum has closed.

It’s time to crank up the righteous indignation.

It’s been 50 years since Prima and Keely Smith won a Grammy for “That Old Black Magic” — in the first year of the awards ceremony. It’s been 30 years since Prima died in his hometown of New Orleans; he succumbed Aug. 24, 1978, after being in a coma for three years. He was born Dec. 10, 1910, so there’s still time to name a street after him or put a star on a sidewalk somewhere by the time the centennial of his birth rolls around.

“The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival will honor Louis on his 100th birthday,” his widow, Gia, says from her home in Toms River, N.J. “They will make a commemorative poster.”

That hardly seems enough for the man whose entertainment career spanned six decades from Dixieland through big bands, lounges and jump blues.

The giant mural at the Louis Armstrong International Airport honors 50 New Orleans legends — but not Prima. “There’s a jazz park on Bourbon Street and they have statues of Al Hirt, Pete Fountain and Louis Armstrong. I would like to see them get a statue of Louis in there,” says the former Gia Maione, who was Prima’s fifth and final wife. After Smith and Prima divorced, she also became Louis’ co-star onstage. “I’ve been trying to get some recognition in Las Vegas for Louis, but so far nothing, not even a park named after him, even though he helped make it the entertainment capital of the world in 1956. It amazes me.”

Prima’s children do their best to keep their father’s music alive. Lena Prima performs a tribute show, and Louis Prima Jr. sometimes gets a gig at an Italian festival or other event, such as a recent show that drew 1,400 fans at the Hilton. But even those gigs are getting tougher to come by. Prima Jr. would like to establish a Louis Prima lounge in one of the Strip resorts to honor his father and the other acts that created the Las Vegas lounge scene.

“The fans know and love my father and his music. It’s the venues,” says Prima Jr., who lives in Las Vegas. “They’ve forgotten him.”

The older generation that knew Prima’s music and saw him perform is dying, says Ron Cannatella, official archivist for Prima Music LLC in New Orleans. But the younger generation knows his music rerun-style through movies and TV.

“Louis’ music is still a vital part of mainstream pop culture,” he says. “They may not know Louis Prima but when you put his music into a contemporary context, people remember.”

Remember the orangutan singing “I Wanna Be Like You” in Disney’s “The Jungle Book”? King Louie was Prima.

All those khaki-clad “Swingers” and “Swing Kids” in the movies and Gap ads? Dancing to Prima. David Lee Roth hamming it up on “Just a Gigolo”? Channeling Prima. Musicians such as Brian Setzer, Los Lobos, Phish, Smashmouth and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy keep Prima’s music alive.

Just consider Prima’s classic composition “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

The stretched out version by Benny Goodman and a big band that included Harry James and Gene Krupa defines swing music. It’s shown up in movies from “After the Thin Man” to “Leatherheads,” in Broadway shows such as “Dancin’ ” and “Swing!” and on TV shows including “The Simpsons,” “The Sopranos” and a long-running Russian serial.

“It was a landmark composition,” Cannatella says. “Louis should receive a posthumous lifetime achievement Grammy or even an Academy Award.

“He’s like a brand name, musically. He would take anything, whether his own composition or a standard, and once Louis Prima got hold of it and put it in his own style it was unmistakable. He is still unique and recognizable today.”

Source: Las Vegas Sun

Visit the official Louis Prima website