Our next stop was Besitang, we visited Putri Hijau, a small
holder palm oil plantation (2000 hectares).
It was a good opportunity to compare with the certified sustainable palm
oil plantations we had seen last year.
Their production yield is quite a bit lower than larger plantations, and
working conditions were different. We
spoke with a woman who spreads fertilizer and the plantation manager. They were happy to show us around the
plantation, and we saw the workers’ accommodations as well – these were very
basic, like most of the homes we saw in other parts of Indonesia .
Adjacent to the small holder is a reforestation site started
by OIC (Orangutan Information Centre) two years ago. Unfortunately due to unclear boundaries, the
small holder had encroached on the Gunung
Leuser National
Forest in 1995.
After this was discovered OIC took on daunting task of removing oil
palms and reforesting 200 hectares. In
December 2011 OIC will be removing 4000 additional oil palms to make more room
for reforestation.
Next we drove to Medan
and met with Musim Mas. Dr. Gan Lian
Tiong, their head of sustainability; they had a presentation prepared to tell
us about their operations and sustainability initiatives. They are very well informed on the issues;
Musim Mas was the first Indonesian palm oil company that was certified by
RSPO. By the end of 2012 they plan to
have all of their plantations and mills certified by RSPO, and also have
methane capture established on all of the mills.
Then we drove to Bukit Lawang, a well-established ecotourism
site that we had visited last year. Our
Ecolodge was well adapted for western guests, our showers were cold but the
water was clean. We hiked to a feeding
platform in the rainforest and waited a while…we knew there was the possibility
we would not see orangutans. Then one by
one three different females and their babies, so a total of six orangutans,
came to the site. Two young females,
under four years old, did not come to the platform but chose to stay in the
trees and play with each other. It was
so fun to watch them interacting and wrestling – mostly while they hung by
their feet.
We are off on our full day of driving to Ketambe, stay
tuned…
Find out more about palm oil and orangutans on our palm oil crisis page and check back soon - we’ll send updates when we can!
Find out more about palm oil and orangutans on our palm oil crisis page and check back soon - we’ll send updates when we can!
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