New Information on Palm Oil and Asian Elephants

We are pleased to announce the posting of some great new materials regarding the palm oil crisis and its affect on elephants. Based on the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s Palm Oil Awareness campaign, these resources have been customized to include information on Asian elephants. These materials have now been posted on the Elephant TAG website and include a palm oil fact sheet, shopping guide, candy guide, and sample letters to companies and government officials. There is still more to come!

Click here to access these materials.

Please share this information and encourage others to make a difference for Asian elephants worldwide!

5 Rare Sumatran Elephants Found Dead in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Five endangered Sumatran elephants have been found dead in Indonesia, and conservationists said Sunday that they suspect farmers poisoned the animals to stop them from damaging crops.

The elephants - four females and one male all under the age of 5 - were found dead late Friday in Riau province on Sumatra island, said Edi Susanto, a government conservationist.

Susanto suspects that owners of nearby palm oil plantations used cyanide to poison the animals, which are known for damaging crops. He said an investigation is under way and samples from the dead elephants have been sent for analysis.

Read more...


Mother and baby Sumatran Elephants (photo does not represent the elephants mentioned in this article.

New Palm Oil Listserve

Conservationists, educators, animal keepers, zoo management and directors - people interested in sharing and receiving palm oil news updates and spreading awareness are encouraged to subscribe to listserve.

To join this listserve please click here.

Indonesia announces moratorium on granting new forest concessions

This article came out WHILE our team was in Indonesia/Malaysia. Norway is giving Indonesia $1 billion but the Indonesian President first had to sign a moratorium on deforestation for 2 years. This sounds great but it is a little more complicated... please read the article below.

The following image shows the rate of deforestation in Indonesia and predicts through the year 2020 the rainforest loss that will occur if the rate does not decrease or stop.





Indonesia announces moratorium on granting new forest concessions
By Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
May 28, 2010

With one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, the world's third largest greenhouse gas emissions due mostly to forest loss, and with a rich biodiversity that is fighting to survive amid large-scale habitat loss, Indonesia today announced a deal that may be the beginning of stopping forest loss in the Southeast Asian country. Indonesia announced a two year moratorium on granting new concessions of rainforest and peat forest for clearing in Oslo, Norway, beginning in January 2011, however concessions already granted to companies will not be stopped. The announcement came as Indonesia received 1 billion US dollars from Norway to help the country stop deforestation.

"Indonesia is prepared to suspend for two years new concessions for the conversion of peat and natural forest lands," said a statement from Indonesia as reported by Reuters. "Sufficient non-forest lands exist for Indonesia to accommodate the growth of its vitally important plantation industries, a major source of livelihoods in Indonesia." Plantation expansion, including palm oil and pulp-and-paper, will focus on lands that are already degraded.

Greenpeace, which has long fought deforestation in Indonesia, analyzed the announcement in a blog today: "This is good news, especially if it makes it into a presidential decree when [Indonesian President] Yudhoyono gets back to Jakarta, and the moratorium was a precondition laid down by Norway for its $1bn share of the financial deal which is specifically targeted at Indonesia. But it doesn't address the millions of hectares which are already in the clutches of logging companies […]Without including existing concessions, deforestation will still continue apace."

In fact Indonesia has confirmed that a 1.6 million hectare (4 million acres) agriculture estate planned for the Papua province on the western half of the island of New Guinea will still go ahead.

"But it will be in the context of this green policy," Papua governor Barnabas Suebu told Reuters. "The land that will be used for the food estate is of very low value of carbon and biodiversity."

In addition, since the moratorium doesn't go into effect until January—based on the letter of intent—some fear that concessions will be continued you to be granted at a booming rate over the next six months, putting more forests and species in jeopardy.

The announcement and the donation of 1 billion US dollars from Norway is seen as the beginning of a REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) program in Indonesia. In fact a portion of the monies will go toward setting up a monitoring system for REDD+ and beginning REDD+ projects.

The meeting in Norway included the announcement of 4 billion US dollars to begin REDD+ projects worldwide. The funds were promised last year at the Copenhagen Climate Conference and have been put forward by the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Australia, Norway, and Japan. Denmark and Sweden promised an addition 73 million US dollars.

Indonesia is second in deforestation loss after Brazil. Between 1990 and 2005, Indonesia lost more than 28 million hectares of forest, including 21.7 hectares of virgin forest. The country's forest cover has declined from 82 percent in the 1960s to less than fifty percent today.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0527-hance_moratorium.html

Wilmar’s and what they are doing about Palm Oil

We spent almost a whole day traveling to, touring and meeting with the staff at one of Wilmar’s plantations and mills. Wilmar is one of the largest palm oil companies in the world. This plantation is RSPO certified as a sustainable producer of palm oil, and Wilmar is in the middle of the lengthy process of acquiring certification for the rest of their plantations. (RSPO stands for Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.)

Callie Beamish, Wilmar’s conservation director, explained in detail about Wilmar’s conservation initiatives. We learned a lot about RSPO criteria, and how the governments in Indonesia and Malaysia are quite different in many ways.

At Wilmar's palm oil mill.

Read more about Wilmar's stance on sustainability.

Journal Notes from Tracey Gazibara

With limited access to internet, we have received a few notes from Tracey and some pictures via text message. Here is what we've heard:

May 30, 2010
We are leaving early tomorrow morning and may have no service for up to 5-6 days. We had several interesting meetings today…there are no easy solutions…seems to get harder as we learn more. I’m trying to just take it all in and worry about a plan later, but the wheels keep turning. The remote area that we are going to is supposed to be beautiful. I look forward to being there.

June 1, 2010
We can actually use the phone but no internet. The home-stay is quite a wonderful experience. We saw lots of monkeys today and some cool hornbills. We are learning a lot about Hutan, they have done some amazing work here. It is beautiful here…amazing sunset tonight. I will try to send more tomorrow.

June 2, 2010
Photos from our home-stay:



Dina and Lapinem, the cat.


Outside the house.

The Harvest Festival in Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu City Harvest Festival
The Ka'amatan (harvest) Festival is celebrated as a thanksgiving in honor of the bambaazon (rice spirit) for a good harvest by the Kadazandusun and Murutic communities in Sabah. This is the city-level Ka'amatan celebration which include highlights such as the most anticipated Harvest Beauty pageant or the Unduk Ngadau, sugandoi (singing) competition featuring Kadazandusun songs, drinking of rice wine (lihing) competition, local food tastings, traditional dancing and many more. Since 1987 Kota Kinabalu Yatch Club has hosted yacht and boat races during the festival. The races are an opportunity for sailors to meet other sailors and the races facilitate international participation in the festival proceedings. All are welcome to join the city dwellers in the merriment, Sabahan style!

Our team had the great fortune to be in Kota Kinabalu during the Harvest Festival and shared what they said:

Kota Kinabalu is the capital of Sabah. We visited Sabah on a holiday called Harvest Festival. We visited the Sunday morning market (see photo) and it was SOOOOOOOO busy. You could buy anything from live rabbits to handicrafts to clothes, pots and pans or books. We also saw a beautiful fish sculpture near the sea (see photo).






























We are heading to Sandakan, Sepilok and will be staying at a home stay for 5 nights and may not have internet until we return to Kota Kinabalu. We are really enjoying our travels through Malaysia.

Meeting with John Payne in Sabah

We had the privilege to meet with John Payne, author of numerous books about mammals in Malaysia who has been working here since 1977. He shared a wealth of knowledge with us over three hours, his experiences concerning numerous threats facing orangutans in Malaysia and Indonesia.


We also met and stayed with an amazing woman who works with Hutan, an Orangutan and Elephant Conservation Organization in Sabah. Harjinder Kler was a wonderful hostess. She has lived her whole life in Sabah, and also knows a great deal about the orangutans here.

From England, Dr. Junaidi (John) Payne is the senior advisor to WWF Malaysia. He received his BS in Zoology from King’s College, London University in 1972 and a Ph.D in Tropical Ecology from Cambridge University in 1979.

Dr. Payne has worked on a variety of conservation projects in Sabah, including wildlife surveys, Sabah Conservation Strategy (adopted by the Sabah Government in 1992), early proposals for Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, and building up a full-time WWF presence in Sabah. He has written several books including A Field Guide to the Mammals of Borneo (1985), and This is Borneo (1994).

In an interview a few years ago, Dr. Payne remarked:
“The remaining natural forests around Sukau are examples of an extremely rare habitat type – natural vegetation of an alluvial floodplain. This is the once-widespread habitat of South-east Asia which in early times (thousands, or at least hundreds. of years ago) was converted to rice paddies. Rice can grow only in open, exposed areas, free of invading tree cover. The ability of certain varieties of rice to grow in flooded land, where few tree species can grow, was a part of the reason why rice expanded as a major food crop through South-east Asia.

It is unclear why lower Kinabatangan escaped human settlement and conversion to rice fields in ancient times. In the ninetieth century, the British administration thought that piracy from the southern Philippines and head-hunting raiders from Kalimantan, were the main reason for the very small numbers of human inhabitants of lower Kinabatangan. More probably, the unpredictable timing and depth of flooding, compared to that generated by the more seasonal rainfall patterns on much of the mainland Asia, made rice growing too risky in the high by erratic rainfall zones of Borneo. Floodplains are not a stable ecosystem. Slow attrition and re-deposition of sediments means that the river’s course changes slowly. A big flood event can cause more rapid change at some localities, especially by cutting through a big bend in the river. Oxbow lakes may be created almost literally overnight, but they remain potentially for centuries before being filled with sediment and pioneered for vegetation.”