Peru creates huge national park in Amazon basin

Yahoo – AFP, 7 Nov 2015

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, pictured on July 28, 2015, will create the Sierra

 del Divisor National Park in a region inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities

living in self-imposed isolation (AFP Photo/Ernesto Benavides)

Lima (AFP) - Peru is creating a national park to protect a vast territory in the Amazon basin that is vulnerable to drug trafficking and illegal logging and mining, the country's environment minister said Saturday.

Called the Sierra del Divisor National Park, it covers an area of about 14,170 square kilometers (5,470 square miles) in a region inhabited by a variety of indigenous communities living in self-imposed isolation.

Peru's President Ollanta Humala will travel to the region Sunday to sign a decree creating the park, Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal said on his Twitter account.

The park has an estimated 3,000 species of plants and animals, many of them found nowhere else in the world, according to the government.

The announcement comes just three weeks ahead of a UN summit aimed at sealing a global pact on climate change.

Advocates of the new park have said it will enable the capture of 150,000 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of nearly 40 percent of Peru's daily carbon output.

Sierra del Divisor has been a protected zone since April 2006. Since then, the communities living there have lobbied for its designation as a national park to stiffen legal protections against encroachment by loggers, miners and drug traffickers.

Sierra del Divisor is the second national park created since Humala took office in 2011, after the Gueppi National Park, a 6,260 square kilometer expanse centered on the Gueppi River in southeastern Peru.

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As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages

A new report shows a direct link between disappearing habitats and the loss of languages. One in four of the world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows

The Guardian, The Observer, John Vidal, Sunday 8 June 2014

A Nenets reindeer herdswoman in Russia's Arctic region. Photograph: Staffan
Widstrand/WWF (click on picture for graphic depicting global language loss)

Benny Wenda from the highlands of West Papua speaks only nine languages these days. In his village of Pyramid in the Baliem valley, he converses in Lani, the language of his tribe, as well as Dani, Yali, Mee and Walak. Elsewhere, he speaks Indonesian, Papua New Guinean Pidgin, coastal Bayak and English.

Wenda has known and forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his grandparents or just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are the languages of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for "greeting" are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak, Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and Hello.

New Guinea has around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to develop there in isolation are broken down.

This is part of a process that has seen languages decline as biodiversity decreases. Researchers have established a correlation between changes in local environments – including the extinction of species – and the disappearance of languages spoken by communities who had inhabited them.

"The forests are being cut down. Many languages are being lost. Migrants come and people leave to find work in the lowlands and cities. The Indonesian government stops us speaking our languages in schools," says Wenda.

According to a report by researchers Jonathan Loh at the Zoological Society of London and David Harmon at the George Wright Society, the steep declines in both languages and nature mirror each other. One in four of the world's 7,000 languages are now threatened with extinction, and linguistic diversity is declining as fast as biodiversity – about 30% since 1970, they say.

While around 21% of all mammals, 13% of birds, 15% of reptiles and 30% of amphibians are threatened, around 400 languages are thought to have become extinct in the same time.

New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world, is not just the world's most linguistically diverse place, it is also one of the most biologically abundant, with tree-climbing kangaroos, birds of paradise, carnivorous mice, giant pigeons, rats bigger than domestic cats and more orchid species than any other place on the planet.

Today, both its wildlife and its languages are endangered. According to linguist and author Asya Pereltsvaig, the language of Bo is spoken by 85 people, Ak by 75 and Karawa by only 63. Likum and Hoia Hoia have around 80 speakers, and Abom just 15. Guramalum in New Ireland Province had at the last count only three speakers and Lua is almost certainly extinct, with a single speaker recorded in 2000.

Ironically, Lua is now the name of a successful computer programming language.

More than half of New Guinea's and one in four of the world's remaining languages are threatened, says Jonathan Loh. This compares with estimates that suggest a quarter of all mammals, a third of all sharks and rays and one in seven bird species are endangered.

"There are extraordinary parallels between linguistic diversity and biodiversity," says Loh. "Both are products of evolution and have evolved in remarkably similar ways, and both are facing an extinction crisis."

But exactly why there should be such a close link between languages and biological diversity is unclear, even though it was noticed by Darwin. "Places of high diversity, especially tropical forests, have always been known to have high linguistic diversity, whereas tundra and deserts have low diversity," says Loh. "It is possible in some way that higher biodiversity is capable of supporting greater cultural diversity. The explanation seems to be that both biological and cultural diversity depend on the same environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall."

Conservationists fear that the loss of species due to man's activities is accelerating. And linguists say that the wealth of the world's human languages is now safeguarded by very few indigenous peoples, most of whom live precarious lives in developing countries.

Of the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, half now have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and these 3,500 languages are spoken by only 0.1% of the world's population – equivalent to a city about the size of London. These eight million people are now responsible for keeping the wealth of human cultural history alive, says the report.

At the other end of the spectrum, because of colonisation, globalisation and the worldwide move to cities in the last 30 years, a handful of global languages increasingly dominates: 95% of the world's population speaks one of just 400 languages, each spoken by millions of people, and 40% of us speak one of just eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.

"We are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. The languages we speak define how we think and understand the world," says Mandana Seyfeddinipur, director of the endangered languages archive at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

"The loss of human culture is frightening," says Loh. "Nearly all the threatened languages are spoken by indigenous peoples and, along with the languages, the traditional knowledge of these cultures is being forgotten. The names, uses, and preparation of medicines, the methods of farming, fishing and hunting are disappearing, not to mention the vast array of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices which are as diverse and numerous as the languages themselves."

Loh and Harman argue that if you want to save nature it may be vital to conserve cultures too. "The vast store of knowledge that has evolved and accumulated over tens of thousands of years could be lost in the next 100 years," says Harman. "While linguists have made efforts to archive as many of the endangered languages as possible, and ethnobiologists have attempted to record the traditional use of plants, the most important conservation takes place on the ground as part of a living culture."

"As we lose rare indigenous languages we lose the cultures and all the knowledge that they contain. The knowledge of indigenous people is phenomenal. Conservationists should make use of it," says Loh.

The authors have developed an "index of linguistic diversity" which shows that the fastest declines have taken place in the Americas and Australia. Languages spoken in Africa, Asia and Europe are faring better. For biodiversity, the fastest rates of decline have occurred in the Indo-Pacific region, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

"Species populations in North America, Europe and northern Asia have been more stable. Biodiversity has declined most rapidly in the tropics, but remained steady in temperate regions.

"However, linguistic diversity has declined rapidly in the new world [Americas] but more slowly in the old world," says Harman.

The explanation for the different speeds of decline, they say, lies with the threats that both languages and species face. "Habitat loss and degradation is the greatest threat for species, and since 1970 most has taken place in the tropics. In the developed world most habitat destruction took place before 1970, so biodiversity loss has flattened out.

"Languages do not usually go extinct because an entire population of speakers dies out, but because the speakers of a minority, usually indigenous, language shift to a more dominant language and, typically within a few generations, lose their mother tongue.

"Migration, urbanisation and national unification policies have been the primary drivers of language shift in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the Americas and Australia, the primary driver has also been migration, but where the migrants, mainly European, greatly outnumbered the indigenous populations.

"Ultimately both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are diminishing as a result of human population growth, increasing consumption and economic globalisation which are eroding the differences between one part of the world and another," says the report.

Benny Wenda says the link between human culture and biodiversity is clear because it is the indigenous peoples of the world who have mostly conserved nature.

"If you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as one."

IT'S ALL TALK …

Around 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than 100,000 people.

Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come from Latin.

2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.

The world's most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.

Some of the oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.

Around 2,500 languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world's languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.

The United Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

Communities isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico, there are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364 variations.

At least half of the world's population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are "perfect bilinguals", who speak two languages equally well, most bilinguals do not.

South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.

The pope tweets in nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and Latin.

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Three Rare Sumatran Tiger Cubs Born at Medan Zoo

Jakarta Globe, November 14, 2012

Three four-week-old cubs sit inside a cage at a zoo in Medan, North Sumatra
on  Wednesday. A critically endangered Sumatran tiger has given birth to three
cubs  at an Indonesian zoo, a veterinarian at the facility said on Wednesday.
(AFP Photo/Atar)

               

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Medan. A critically endangered Sumatran tiger has given birth to three cubs at an Indonesian zoo, a veterinarian at the facility said on Wednesday.

“She gave birth naturally, without human intervention. The three cubs are all healthy. Two are male, while we haven’t been able to get close to the other to identify it,” Suci Terawan, a veterinarian at Medan Zoo in North Sumatra, told AFP.

The 13-year-old Sumatran tiger named Manis, or Sweetie in English, gave birth to the cubs on Oct. 18, just over a year after she successfully bore three male cubs, Terawan said.

“This is our latest contribution in conserving the critically endangered species,” he said, adding that the zoo now has six cubs, and one female and two male adults.

Earlier this year, a Sumatran tiger at a zoo on the island’s Jambi province gave birth to three cubs, but only two survived.

Fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers are left in the wild, conservationists say, with several dying each year as a result of traps, poaching and other human intervention.

Agence France-Presse

The People, Events That Made Our Year

Jakarta Globe, Nurhayat Indriyatno, December 31, 2011

After being returned from Colombia, former Democratic Party treasurer
 Muhammad Nazaruddin dominated the news. He is now on trial for
corruption over a SEA Games bribery scandal. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal) 

    

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The past year offered up a bounty of prime headline fodder, with plenty of people stepping into the glare of the public spotlight, willingly or not, to capture the nation’s attention.

From the twists and turns in the globe-spanning saga of a corruption fugitive and the seedy revelations behind the lavish lifestyle of a high-flying banking executive to the meteoric rise of a lip-synching wonder, 2011 was never short of newsmakers.

Muhammad Nazaruddin

The person who arguably hogged the most headlines and TV airtime this year was Muhammad Nazaruddin, who at the start of 2011 was being feted as part of the new generation of savvy youngsters rising through the ranks of the ruling Democratic Party.

In mid-April, however, things began unraveling for him when a fixer caught during a bribery bust at the Youth and Sports Affairs Ministry revealed that she worked for Nazaruddin and that she had been ordered to facilitate a bribe to a ministry official to secure the contract to build the athletes’ village for the Southeast Asian Games.

On May 23, he fled for Singapore, a day before the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) applied for a travel ban against him. Once abroad, he began leveling a rash of accusations against other Democrats, including party chairman Anas Urbaningrum.

He was arrested in Cartagena, Colombia, in August and repatriated, but the controversy rages on. In his ongoing trial, the former Democrat continues to drop names.

Diani Budiarto

Undoubtedly one of the most polarizing figures in the news this year was Diani Budiarto, the mayor of Bogor. Backed by Islamic hard-liners and lambasted by almost everyone else, his term in office has been defined by his controversial decision to seal off the GKI Yasmin church and prevent parishioners from using it.

Although in possession of a valid building permit issued in 2006, the church was sealed off by the city in 2010 on the grounds that church officials had falsified the signatures on the petition required to get the permit.

The Supreme Court in January ruled against the revocation of the permit and ordered the church reopened. However, Diani has refused to comply, offering up a range of excuses, including that churches cannot be built on streets with Islamic names.

Nor did it help his reputation when, in August, the 56-year-old mayor married a 19-year-old woman — his fourth concurrent wife.

Throughout the year, the GKI Yasmin congregation continued to be harassed by mobs of conservative Muslims every Sunday as it attempted to hold services outside the sealed-off building.

This Christmas, the congregation was once again blocked from going near the church and forced to hold Mass at a member’s house. If the stalemate holds, they will be facing another Christmas without a church this time next year.

Malinda Dee

One of the most outlandish and literally larger-than-life characters to make the news this year was Inong Malinda Dee, a Citibank relationship manager who was arrested in March for allegedly embezzling Rp 17 billion ($1.8 million) from customers. Prosecutors later revised the figure up to Rp 40 billion.

In the ensuing probe, police seized two Ferraris, a Hummer and a Mercedes sports car from her. It was also revealed that she had undergone extensive breast augmentation surgery, as well as a procedure to implant silicone in her vagina. During her incarceration prior to her trial, she had to be hospitalized for several weeks because of complications from the implants.

Her trial, now under way, has revealed how she allegedly siphoned large amounts of money from clients and laundered it through accounts belonging to her sister and brother-in-law. These two are also on trial, as is Malinda’s much younger common-law husband, actor Andhika Gumilang.

Angelina Sondakh

Another high-profile woman making waves was Angelina Sondakh, a former Miss Indonesia and currently a House legislator with the Democratic Party.

Angelina garnered nationwide sympathy back in February when her husband, fellow legislator and former actor Adjie Massaid, died of a heart attack at just 43. But that sympathy quickly disappeared when the SEA Games scandal broke and Angelina was one of several legislators accused of taking kickbacks from the project. Though questioned by the KPK, she has not been named a suspect.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that Angelina was involved in a “personal, close relationship” with a married investigator on loan to the KPK from the police.

Norman Kamaru

Long criticized as among the nation’s most corrupt institutions, the police force received a welcome, though brief, reprieve this year through Norman Kamaru, a young officer with the Mobile Brigade in Gorontalo province.

In late March, a video of Norman lip-synching and dancing to the popular Hindi song “Chaiya-Chaiya” went viral on YouTube (to date, it has been viewed more than three million times).

The official reaction was one of outrage, with the National Police saying Norman would be punished for “naughty, childish behavior.” They quickly relented, however, following massive public support for the officer.

Norman was jetted into Jakarta for a whirlwind tour of popular music and talk shows. But he was soon focusing more on his foray into the entertainment industry than on his job, giving rise to tensions with his superiors.

In September he tendered his resignation from the force, and after a standoff over whether he should pay back his training costs, the police finally gave him a dishonorable discharge this month for dereliction of duty.

Irfan Bachdim

Another young sensation this year was Irfan Bachdim, the half-Dutch heartthrob nationalized and recruited to the national football team.

It was in December last year that he captured the nation’s attention with his model-good looks and electrifying skills on the pitch during the Asean Football Federation Suzuki Cup.

Throughout 2011, he has appeared in numerous movies and commercials and been the subject of intense media scrutiny over his relationship with Indonesian-German lingerie model Jennifer Kurniawan, the sister of one of his teammates, Kim.

In October, though, things soured for Irfan when he was dropped from the under-23 team, after failing to show up to practice because he was doing a commercial shoot.

Marzuki Alie

Politics dominated much of the national debate this year, and front and center for much of it was Marzuki Alie, the House speaker from the Democratic Party.

Marzuki started the year out under a cloud, facing heavy criticism both from the public and from inside the House over his insistence on pushing ahead with a plan to build a costly new office tower for legislators.

In April, relenting to the public outcry, Marzuki finally pulled the plug on the project, but not until $2.5 million had already been spent in the planning phase.

The speaker also courted much ridicule this year for his many gaffes, from calling a caterpillar infestation in Java and Bali a biblical-style “warning from God” to suggesting that staff from the United Nations Development Program should vacate their offices in the legislative building because the UNDP was a “foreign nongovernmental organization.”

He also put his foot in it in February, at the height of public indignation over the mistreatment of Indonesian migrant workers, by suggesting they were hurting the country’s reputation. “Some of them can’t iron properly, so it’s natural if the employer ends up landing the hot iron on the migrant worker’s body,” he said.

Tifatul Sembiring

Another politician seldom out of the headlines was Tifatul Sembiring, the communication and information technology minister from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

The minister started the year the way he ended 2010, with a campaign to get Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, to install porn-blocking filters for its services. Round one went to Tifatul, with RIM complying ahead of the mid-January deadline.

His antiporn victory, however, was soured by a scandal in April in which a PKS legislator was caught watching pornography on his tablet computer during a plenary session of the House.

Tifatul, usually vocal about such matters, took much flak for not weighing in.

In December, he went after BlackBerry again, this time threatening to shut down its Internet service because it had not yet complied with an order to set up a data center in the country.

Orangutan

While the politicians may have been monkeying around, things were far more dire this year for the orangutan, the iconic, and endangered, red apes of Sumatra and Borneo.

The year started out positively enough with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation getting the go-ahead in April to release captive orangutans back into the wild, following a nine-year hiatus marked by zero releases.

A month later, though, it was revealed that the concession in which the 1,200 animals were to be gradually released was rife with illegal logging and poaching activities. From there, things only got worse. In November, a study showed that villagers in Kalimantan were responsible for the deaths of 750 of the apes over the past year. Days later, disturbing news emerged from East Kalimantan that an oil palm company there had ordered the slaughter of dozens of orangutans and other primates it deemed pests.

Komodo

The year was more mixed for another iconic Indonesian animal, the Komodo dragon.

In March, Surabaya Zoo, notorious for the high rate of deaths among its animals, reported that three juvenile dragons went missing, possibly stolen for the lucrative illegal trade in exotic species. Sure enough, in October police arrested a man for trying to sell one of the animals.

A month later, an adult dragon was found dead at the zoo, with the cause of death believed to be food poisoning from consuming items thrown to it by visitors.

But there was also good news, of sorts, for the animal in its natural habitat. Komodo National Park was in November named to the provisional list of the New Seven Wonders of Nature.

The recognition, however, was tainted by the long and testy nature of the competition, which saw the organizer, the N7W Foundation, drop the Culture and Tourism Ministry as the official supporting partner for Komodo’s bid over a fee dispute. In the end, the park made it into the final seven.

Shark fin goes off the menu at Peninsula hotels

The move will affect the group's nine hotels, including those in China and Hong Kong, the center of the global shark fin market

guardian.co.uk, Justin McCurry in Osaka,  Thursday 24 November 2011

73 million sharks are killed yearly for shark fin soup.
Photograph: Paul Hilton/EPA

Environmental groups are claiming a significant victory in the campaign to save the global shark population, after the Peninsula hotel group said it would stop serving shark fin dishes from January.

Peninsula, one of Asia's most prestigious hotel chains, said on Monday it would no longer sell the dishes, considered a delicacy in Hong Kong and other parts of the region, "in recognition of the threat facing the global shark population and in line with the company's sustainability vision".

The move will affect the group's nine hotels, including those in China and Hong Kong, the center of the global shark fin market.

Hong Kong handles between 50% and 80% of the global trade in shark fins, bringing in catches from more than 100 countries, with Spain its biggest supplier. In 2006 it took delivery of more than 10,000 tonnes worth US$276m, according to the UN food and agricultural organisation.

Most is consumed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also in mainland provinces such as Guangdong, where its consumption has become a status symbol among China's nouveau riche.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, which owns the Peninsula group, said it would honour requests for shark fin soup made before 21 November, for consumption after 1 January.

The dish, which comprises pieces of rehydrated shark fin in a rich broth, is a popular staple at wedding parties and formal banquets, with a serving for 12 people costing around US$138.

In Hong Kong districts such as Sheung Wan, which specialises in dried seafood, premium shark fin can fetch up to US$1,280 per kilo. One Sheung Wan wholesaler recently told the Guardian, however, that the market price had dropped by about 20% in the past two months, partly as a result of the campaign.

About 73 million sharks are killed every year, and the appetite for their fins in places such as Hong Kong has taken one in three shark species to the brink of extinction.

"By removing shark fin from our menus, we hope that our decision can contribute to preserving the marine ecosystem for the world's future generations," the Peninsula group's chief executive, Clement Kwok, said in a statement.

"As Asia's oldest hotel company, we also hope that our decision will inspire other hospitality companies to do the same."

Other luxury hotel chains have attempted to reduce shark fin consumption by offering alternative menus for wedding banquets, sometimes with inducements such as a free night's accommodation for the newlyweds.

The push to remove the delicacy – prized more for its glutinous texture than for its taste – has gathered momentum after a slow start, according to World Wildlife Fund, which has seen 97 caterers and hotels sign up to its alternative shark-free menu in the past year.

A 2010 survey of eating habits by Bloom Association, a marine conservation group, found that despite the dish's central place in Cantonese cuisine, attitudes were shifting, particularly among younger people.

According to Bloom, 66% of Hong Kong diners said they were uncomfortable with the idea of eating an endangered species, and more than three-quarters said they would not mind if it was removed from banquet menus.

The Peninsula announcement came as the European commission called for a global ban on shark finning – the practice of cutting off a shark's fin and throwing its body back into the sea – by EU fishermen. EU countries are responsible for about 14% – the second-largest share – of the global shark catch.

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Caterpillars Are a ‘Warning From God,’ House Speaker Says

Jakarta Globe, April 13, 2011

A Ministry of Agriculture official displaying caterpillars during an outbreak
in Medan, North Sumatra, on Wednesday. House of Representatives (DPR)
Speaker Marzuki Alie says an outbreak of caterpillars that has reached plague
proportions in parts of Indonesia is a warning from God. (Antara Photo)

A senior politician from the ruling Democratic Party says an outbreak of caterpillars that has reached plague proportions in parts of Indonesia is a warning from God.

House of Representatives (DPR) Speaker Marzuki Alie, who has a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth, said on Wednesday that the caterpillar infestations in parts of Bali, Java, Jakarta and Sumatra was a message from God for Indonesians to look inwards and evaluate themselves.

Caterpillar

“Yes, it was God’s warning,” Marzuki said at the DPR. “It is God’s warning that we should introspect and make changes. Every incident has a meaning behind it.”

Marzuki said it was “not good” for us to keep on debating and fighting over issues.

He said Indonesia was facing many problems and therefore it was better for all elements in society to focus on their work for the betterment of the nation.

Marzuki has most recently made headlines for continuing to push for the controversial construction of a Rp 1.13 trillion office tower for legislators.

When an NGO threatened to file a lawsuit against him, Marzuki claimed that nongovernmental organizations did not represent the people, lawmakers did.

“[NGOs] please don’t speak on behalf of the people, House members are the official representatives,” he said.

In late October, following the tsunami that devastated the Mentawai Islands off West Sumatra, Democrat and House Speaker Marzuki Alie was widely criticized for saying the victims should have expected the disaster.

“If you’re afraid of waves, don’t live by the shore,” he said. “To be swept away by a big wave or by a tsunami is probably the consequence of living on an island.”

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Baby elephant

The Jakarta Post, The Associated Press, Singapore | Fri, 12/10/2010

Baby elephant: A 2-week old male baby elephant explores next to his 25-year old mother, Nandong, at the Singapore Zoo's Night Safari on Friday in Singapore. This baby is the first baby to be born in the enclosure after 9 years and had a birth weight of 151-kilograms. The Singapore Zoo and Night Safari ensures that its animals in captivity have habitats as close to that of the wild as part of its wildlife conservation efforts. Elephants are listed as endangered on International Union for Conservation of Nature.(AP/Wong Maye-E)

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Classic Dox - A boat trip through Borneo

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Anne Blair Gould

(Photo: rnw.nl)

Borneo is one of the top five places on earth where wildlife is most endangered. One area seriously threatened is the Sebangau peat swamp forest in Kalimantan where the world's largest population of orangutans is dwindling fast.

Ten years ago there were 15,000 orangutans; now there are only 7,000. Illegal logging robs them of their home; illegal pet trading robs the young orangs of their mothers. And the worst thing is, these are not even the greatest threats right now. What's really going to put paid to the peat forest of Sebangau is a vast network of canals that's draining the whole swampy area.

Peatland drying out

"These canals were dug by illegal loggers to float the logs out to the larger rivers bordering this area," explains Helen Morrogh-Bernard who is studying orangutan ecology and behaviour in Sebangau. The net result of all these canals is that the peat swamp forest has been drying out.

"As the canals drain the area, the peat dries out, the trees fall over and forest fires start more easily," adds Simon Husson, who like Helen Morrogh-Bernard works for CIMTROP (Centre for International Co-operation in Management of Tropical Peatland) and studies Sebangau's orangutans. "It's the biggest single problem we have here," Simon continues.

"Because the canals are draining this peatland, we get very extended dry seasons where the water-table can be one-and-a-half metres below the surface, whereas it use to be only 30 centimetres."

Thanks to much work on the part of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Sebangau was declared a National Park in October 2004, and environmentalists are hopeful that this will at least reduce if not stop illegal logging.

Orphan orangutans

In other part of this same forest, we find the Nyara Menteng rehabilitation centre for orphaned orangutans. This is the second centre built by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by Dutchman Willie Smits. The first, 'Wanariset Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre,' built in 1991, is in East Kalimantan.

Communications officer, Jo-Lan van Leeuwen, explains what the BOS Foundation is trying to do:

"All the little orangutans here have been orphaned when hunters shot there mother in order to capture the baby for the illegal pet trade. Baby orangs usually stay with their mother for the first seven or eight years and they learn how to find fruits and how to make nests from their mothers. So here we provide them with human 'surrogate mothers' who take the little orang-utans into the forest every day and try and them teach them the skills they need."

Orangutan exams

They will eventually need these skills as the BOS Foundation plans to reintroduce as many of the 300 or so young apes back into the wild as possible. But first each orangutan has to pass its exams.

"Not far from the centre we have three islands where we bring our orang-utans when we think that they might have the right character and the necessary skills to make it on their own,” says van Leeuwen.

“Here on these islands we observe them closely to see if they make the grade - and if they pass the test, then we will release them into a protected area where there really will be on their own - although we will still be observing them."

Planting season: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono plants a mangrove tree in the Angke ecotourism park in North Jakarta on Monday as part of efforts to rehabilitate the mangrove forest. Antara/Widodo S. Jusuf

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J’aime Komodo

The Jakarta Post | Sat, 05/01/2010 5:48 PM

J’aime Komodo: Indonesian campaigners explain to visitors of Eiffel Tower in Paris on how to vote for Komodo National Park on Friday. Tourism Ministry is wooing global support for the komodo dragon island as one of the new seven wonders. – Antara/Ujang Zaelani

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Beauty and the beast: Animal activist Zeby Febrina poses with a komodo dragon named Bagol, 16, at Ragunan Zoo in Jakarta on Sunday. Bagol is one of two komodos to be shipped to Sosto Zoological Park in Hungary, as breeder-in-loans for the next five years. JP/Wendra Ajistyatama

Foreign tourist dies heart attack on Burung Island

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 03/31/2010 7:49 PM

Lawrence Ellis Sute Liffe, 76, an English citizen who lived in Kenya, East Africa, died of a heart attack on Tuesday, while visiting Burung Island at Kasemen district, Serang, Banten.

Kasemen police chief Insp. Edi Haidir said Lawrence visited the island along with his wife Ana Rose Marry and two other friends Jonathan Bernady and Audrena Merylaw, also English citizens.

Edi said based on post mortem examination results at Serang General Hospital, the tourist died of heart attack.

“The tourist died while taking a walk on the island,” he said, adding that the police received report about the death from a boat driver identified as Yanto, who took the tourists to the island.

In response to the report, police officers headed to the island and conducted an investigation before transferring the body to the hospital.

The island, which is home to around 14,000 birds of 108 species, is a popular tourist attraction.