Orangutan forest being logged despite Indonesian gov’t vow

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Environmentalists say a tropical forest that’s home to critically endangered orangutans on Borneo island is being logged more than a year after Indonesia’s forestry and environment ministry ordered a halt to the forest’s exploitation.

Greenpeace said Tuesday its investigations at the Sungai Putri forest showed a logging operation underway with at least six illegal settlements that operate at night and some in areas with orangutan nests.

The 57,000-hectare forest, populated with as many as 1,200 orangutans, is testing the government’s ability to enforce its moratorium on drainage and exploitation of Indonesia’s extensive peatland forests, which was declared after massive dry season fires in 2015.

September 24, 2015: Indonesian police and firefighters extinguish a fire on burning peatland in the district of Kapuas on Borneo Island during Indonesian President Joko Widodo's inspection of a firefighting operation to control agricultural and forest fires. /VCG Photo

The fires, which destroyed 2.6 million hectares and swathed parts of Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand in a health-wrecking haze, highlighted the huge risks that pulpwood and palm oil companies have taken in draining swampy peatlands for industrial plantations, making them highly combustible. The World Bank estimated the fires caused losses of 16 billion US dollars.

The latest investigation is the second revelation in less than a year that commercial exploitation of the forest continues.

Photos and drone footage taken by activists showed an extensive drainage canal full of water, heavy earth-moving equipment on the land and planting of pulp wood tree seedlings despite an order from the Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya for the company responsible to cease operations.

Damage caused by industrial machinery (L) and aerial view of palm oil plantation on deforested land (R), Sabah, Borneo /Photo via World Wildlife Fund website

“This is a major embarrassment for the Indonesian government, which has consistently promised to protect Sungai Putri,” Greenpeace, a non-governmental environmental organization, said in a statement.

The ForestHints website, a semi-official news site for the ministry, said in a June 1 article that Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya has “displayed great consistency” in making sure Sungai Putri is not cleared. It said the forest would “unquestionably have been destroyed” without the ministry’s previous sanctions.

(Cover: File photo of a wild orangutan climbs a tree in Sungai Mangkutub, Central Borneo, Indonesia, Jan. 6, 2016. /AP Photo)

Source(s): AP