MUST READ ~ The Nation: The Wrong Kind of Green

By Johann Hari
March 4, 2010
Source: thenation.com

This article appeared in the March 22, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic,” as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path–one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair–president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995–was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world’s pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilizing the climate–the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn’t make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for “environmental stewardship.”

Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw it as valuable “reputation insurance”: every time they were criticized for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green awards, purchased with “charitable” donations, to ward off the prospect of government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled–so they, too, started to take the checks.

Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, “About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organization’s media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country…. But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren’t supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were ‘helping’ us, and that was it.”

She soon began to see–as she explains in her whistleblowing book Green Inc.–how this behavior has pervaded almost all the mainstream green organizations. They take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation. To take just one example, when it was revealed that many of IKEA’s dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company’s defense, saying–wrongly–that IKEA “can never guarantee” this won’t happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a “marketing partner” with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?

Likewise, the Sierra Club was approached in 2008 by the makers of Clorox bleach, who said that if the Club endorsed their new range of “green” household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The Club’s Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest–but took it anyway. Executive director Carl Pope defended the move in an e-mail to members, in which he claimed that the organization had carried out a serious analysis of the cleaners to see if they were “truly superior.” But it hadn’t. The Club’s Toxics Committee co-chair, Jessica Frohman, said, “We never approved the product line.” Beyond asking a few questions, the committee had done nothing to confirm that the product line was greener than its competitors’ or good for the environment in any way.

The green groups defend their behavior by saying they are improving the behavior of the corporations. But as these stories show, the pressure often flows the other way: the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core. As MacDonald says, “Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them.”

It has taken two decades for this corrupting relationship to become the norm among the big green organizations. Imagine this happening in any other sphere, and it becomes clear how surreal it is. It is as though Amnesty International’s human rights reports came sponsored by a coalition of the Burmese junta, Dick Cheney and Robert Mugabe. For environmental groups to take funding from the very people who are destroying the environment is preposterous–yet it is now taken for granted.

This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming. We have emitted so many warming gases into the atmosphere that the world’s climate scientists say we are close to the climate’s “point of no return.” Up to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, all sorts of terrible things happen–we lose the islands of the South Pacific, we set in train the loss of much of Florida and Bangladesh, terrible drought ravages central Africa–but if we stop the emissions of warming gases, we at least have a fifty-fifty chance of stabilizing the climate at this higher level. This is already an extraordinary gamble with human safety, and many climate scientists say we need to aim considerably lower: 1.5 degrees or less.

Beyond 2 degrees, the chances of any stabilization at the hotter level begin to vanish, because the earth’s natural processes begin to break down. The huge amounts of methane stored in the Arctic permafrost are belched into the atmosphere, causing more warming. The moist rainforests begin to dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon they store into the air, and causing more warming. These are “tipping points”: after them, we can’t go back to the climate in which civilization evolved.

So in an age of global warming, the old idea of conservation–that you preserve one rolling patch of land, alone and inviolate–makes no sense. If the biosphere is collapsing all around you, you can’t ring-fence one lush stretch of greenery and protect it: it too will die. ……. (cont.)

Read the rest of the article and learn more on thenation.com.

---

Orangutans have ?caller ID?

March 9, 2010
Source: CBC News

The calls of male orangutans contain information about the apes’ identity and the context of the call, researchers say.

An international team of researchers, led by Carel van Schaik of the University of Zurich, tracked the behaviour and calls of three male orangutans on a nature reserve in Borneo’s Indonesian region.

While all orangutans have a wide variety of calls, only sexually mature male orangutans with enlarged cheek pads, or flanges, can make long-distance calls through the jungle.

Brigitte Spillmann of the University of Zurich described the calls as “a series of long, booming pulses and grumbles, which can be heard through over a kilometre of dense jungle.”

The researchers wanted to know whether these “long calls” contain information about the identity of the ape and the reason for the call.

“Individual recognition is important in long-distance communication when individuals are separated beyond visual contact. We examined whether individual identity and context were also encoded into a long call,” Spillmann said in a release.

The scientists observed the orangutans and recorded their behaviours each time they emitted a call. Their results were published this week in the journal Ethology.

Calls may be response

Some of the apes’ calls were spontaneous and not provoked by any obvious prompt. Other calls were in response to behaviours of other apes, such as another male’s long call or a tree falling nearby.

Orangutans will sometimes push over trees as part of a noisy, dominant display called snag crashing, similar to chest pounding in gorillas.

The researchers found that the orangutans’ pulsing calls in response to snag crashing or another male’s call were faster and consisted of more pulses of shorter duration than calls that were spontaneous.

The scientists also observed the behaviour of some female orangutans who heard the male apes’ calls.

Females with young offspring moved away from males making spontaneous calls, while sexually active females seemed to move toward them.

“This may be because in Borneo, females with offspring and rival males are not the target of the spontaneous long calls, but are eavesdroppers. However, the cost to the caller goes up if there is a more dominant male eavesdropper who may respond,” said Spillmann.

The females who heard the calls that were in response to another male’s behaviour ignored them.

“Long calls given in response to a disturbance are likely intended to repel rivals or potential predators, which accounts for the females’ lack of reaction, compared with spontaneous long calls. Females are able to tell the difference between the types of long call and they react accordingly,” said Spillmann.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/09/tech-biology-orangutan-call.html

---

Dentist operates on Colchester Zoo?s much-loved Orangutan

Peter Kertesz operates on Rajang last week

A DENTIST carried out an unusual operation at Colchester Zoo recently – removing three teeth from the attraction’s most-famed animal.

West End dentist Peter Kertesz travelled to Colchester to aid Rajang the Orangutan, who is 41-years-old, and greets all visitors to the zoo as they walk in. While Mr Kertesz specialises in treating animals at zoos all over the world, he also treats human patients at his London clinic.

Curator Clive Barwick said: ?Despite being very sleepy afterwards, Rajang, has made a full recovery from the operation over the weekend.

?He is the grand old age of 41 so there was naturally some concern in carrying out the procedure so we’re really happy with how it’s all gone.?

Source: http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/

---

Indonesia?s protected forests now up for grabs for mining

Adianto P. Simamora
Source: The Jakarta Post
03/09/2010

The government has just issued two new regulations on forests, which could allow protected forests to be used for commercial purposes, including long-banned mining activities.

Under the regulations, conservation forests could also be converted to production forests, to be used for plantations of trees such as acacia.

?We are now waiting for a presidential decree to bring the regulations into force. A number of firms have applied for mining permits in protected forest areas,? a senior official at the Forestry Ministry, Bambang Mulyo, said Monday.

The government regulation No. 24 on the use of forest areas says mining firms can dig for natural resources deposited under protected and production forests.

Article 5 of the regulation stipulates that in protected areas, miners are only allowed to conduct underground mining that does not change the forest functions.

However, in production forests miners could use both open pit and underground mining techniques.
Indonesia currently has 31.6 million hectares of the protected forests, of which 10.6 million hectares is in Papua province.

The second-largest area of protected forests is in East Kalimantan (2.7 million hectares) and West Kalimantan (2.3 million hectares).

The government has allotted some 22.7 million hectares for production land that could be converted for business uses.

The 1999 Law on Forestry strongly prohibits mining activities in protected forest areas, be it open pit or underground mining. Under this law, mining is only allowed in production forest areas.

Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri issued a decree to grant special licenses to 13 giant mining firms to operate open-pit mines in protected forest areas.

Among the 13 are PT Aneka Tambang in Southeast Sulawesi, PT Freeport Indonesia in Mimika, Papua, Karimun Granit in Riau, INCO in Sulawesi, Natarang Mining in Lampung, Nusa Halmahera Mineral in North Maluku, Pelsart Tambang Kencana in South Kalimantan, Interex Sacra Raya in East and South Kalimantan and Weda Bay Nickel in North Maluku.

Regulation No. 24 also stipulates that protected forests may now be used for non-forestry businesses serving strategic purposes.

?We will elaborate on these strategic goals with the Environment Ministry and the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry,? Bambang said.

Greenomics Indonesia executive director Elfian Effendi warns that a blurred definition of strategic goals could mean more areas of protected forests are cleared in the name of development.

?The government needs to impose a moratorium on new permits for mining firms conducting open-pit mining in forest areas,? he said.

In addition to the mining sector, the ministry issued regulation No. 10 that allows for protected and conservation forests to be converted to production land, the first ever such policy in Indonesia.
Critics say the regulation may lead to open-pit mining in protected forest areas.

Bambang, however, said he would not allow this to happen. ?While there are minerals deposited under the production land, license holders are not allowed to dig them up,? he said.

The government has long faced international pressure to improve its management of forests, with the current rate of deforestation at more than 1 million hectares a year.

Indonesia plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020, of which 14 percent would be from stopping deforestation, combating illegal logging and controlling forest fires.

The government also pledged to plant 1 billion trees this year to re-green the country?s millions of hectares of degraded forest land.

---

Obama To Discuss Climate Center In Indonesia

Source: The Jakarta Post
March 2, 2010
By Adianto P. Simamora

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his United States counterpart President Barack Obama are slated to talk on climate change issues, and aiming to set up the first regional climate center in Indonesia. Under the plan, Indonesia will become a hub for scientific data and a training center on climate change issues for five countries in Southeast Asia ? Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines and Indonesia ? and 17 nations in the Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Fiji.

“We hope the US will provide technical assistance, financing and technology transfer facilities to support the establishment of the regional center on climate change in Indonesia,” Yudhoyono’s special assistant on climate change Agus Purnomo said Monday. Obama, who spent a small part of his childhood in Jakarta, will visit the country this month.

Agus, who is also the National Council on Climate Change (DNPI) secretary, said the regional center would be a hub for climate information especially on issues related to oceans and forests as well as on mitigation and adaptation programs. He said Obama and Yudhoyono would also discuss a comprehensive partnership on capacity building and technology transfer to help more accurate forecasting of climate phenomenon in Indonesia. “We are in dire need of such technology to help us make more accurate forecasts on climate phenomenon. Many natural disasters ? floods, landslides and harvest failures ? in Indonesia reflected that without adequate technology it was harder to forecast events due to climate change,” he said.

Head of the climate change division at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) Advin Aldrian said Indonesian officials, chaired by the Research and Technology Ministry, had visited Washington to discuss cooperation. “We have made a draft proposal to be submitted during Obama’s visit,” he said without elaborating. “However, the government plans to conduct more scientific research on oceans and forests and their role in climate change. The United States has increased their support to help us in this research,” he added. Indonesia led the way by formally tabling issues on oceans and climate change in Copenhagen last year.

During the global environment ministerial meeting in Bali last week, Yudhoyono was given an award by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for his leadership in promoting ocean and marine conservation and management. The US has provided financial assistance to implement the Coral Triangle Initiative agreed in the Manado summit last year. In terms of forestry, the US has provided funds to protect the forest including through the debt-for-nature scheme.

Both Indonesia and the US are currently negotiating a second deal in the debt-for-nature scheme by which funds would be used to help conserve forest areas in Indonesia. The two countries signed the first debt-for-nature deal last June, swapping US$30 million of Indonesia’s debt that could then be used to conserve around 7 million hectares of forest in Batang Gadis National Park in North Sumatra, Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in Central Sumatra and Way Kambas National Park in Lampung.

---

On the Ropes: Indonesia and Malaysia Team Up Against Palm Oil Critics

March 07, 2010
Arti Ekawati
Source: The Jakarta Globe

Indonesia and Malaysian palm oil producers have agreed to jointly tackle challenging environmental and labor issues which threaten to hinder the development of the industry in both countries.

Producers have lately come under attack on a number of fronts. Environmentalists complain the growth of palm oil plantations contributes to deforestation, threatens wildlife and increases greenhouse gas emissions, while there has also been criticism of the industry?s use of underage labor.

Late on Friday, Indonesia and Malaysian signed a memorandum of understanding in which they agreed to collaborate and improve communication between producers in both countries to counter the impact of critics of the industry and also to improve sustainability.

?Through collaboration, hopefully we can face the negative campaign [against the industry] and the accusations of environmental damage,? said Indonesia?s Agriculture Minister Suswono, after the signing ceremony.

The world?s top palm oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia together account for about 85 percent of global output.

Suswono cited Unilever?s suspension last year of palm oil purchases from PT Smart, after a report from Greenpeace which claimed the company did not use sustainable production processes, as an example of the type of situation where the industry would benefit from enhanced cooperation.

?It?s not fair,? he said. ?In the future, if there are any accusations, we will immediately form an independent team to inspect the case. So that we, palm oil producers, will have a stronger bargaining position than the buyer.?

As part of the coordination efforts, six palm oil industry associations from Indonesia and Malaysia on Friday signed a memorandum of collaboration that will, among other things, establish a steering committee to advise the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an organization that issues certificates to palm oil producers that comply with certain environmental standards. A number of major palm oil buyers do not buy from companies that lack the certification.

Under the memorandum of collaboration, producers are also encouraged to develop sustainable plantation practices, including restoring land after it has been used for palm oil plantations.

Malaysian Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Giluk Dompok said environmental issues were being increasingly used to attack the palm oil industrys.

?There is no reason for palm oil producers in the two countries to not to cooperate and discuss issues of common interest,? he said.

Dato? Mamat Salleh, the Malaysian Palm Oil Association?s chief executive, said the industry would face increased environmental challenges in the future.

One hurdle for the water-intensive industry was the development of so-called water footprints, a measure used to show how much water is used in the production of palm oil, he said.

?There will be new environmental issues, which could make palm oil plantations become more controversial in the future,? Dato said. ?We need fair scientific research so that we can also improve our plantations,? he said.

Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (Gapki) chairman Joefly J Bachroeny said the cooperation efforts were also aimed at helping Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil producers to improve sustainability.

---

West Kalimantan police chief admits ?Illegal Logging? Still There

March 6, 2010
Source: Antara News

Pontianak (ANTARA News) – Chief of Regional Police (Polda) West Kalimantan, Police Brigadier General Erwin TPL Tobing admitted there were practical illegal logging or illegal logging in Ketapang and Bengkayang.

“Logging the forest on a large scale as a few years ago, no longer exists. However, for small-scale logging and ‘` cat and mouse with police officers, still there, “Erwin said in Pontianak, Saturday.

He said it is difficult to eradicate the practice of illegal logging in the province, but because of the vast area that must be monitored, as well as lack of personnel Polda Kalbar.

“But the important this practice on a large scale could have suppressed, and our supervision gradually leads to a small practice,” he said.

According to him, the difficulty of pressing these illegal practices because most people are still dependent of the wood.

In addition, the wood raw material for development in West Kalimantan is still the main choice, compared to iron and cement.

Previously, the results of investigations Institute of Research and Regional Information Flow Studies (LPS-AIR) Kalbar for five days in December 2009 and early 2010 in District Bengkayang Ketapang and still find the rampant illegal logging activities.

Director of Water Demand LPS-agram, Monday (8 / 2) and said it lowered the five members to conduct investigations in the village of Sahan, Seluas District, and Village Semunying Jaya, District Jagoibabang, Bengkayang, and still found a widespread activity.

“The results of our investigation team on the field,` `illegal logging began to bloom since 1977 until now, but the amount of lumber has dropped dramatically, due to simultaneous logging without replanting,” he said.

He mentioned that the mode of public finance brokers around to harvest timber, and then sold to these brokers.

Meanwhile, in the village of Semunying Jaya, District JAGOI BABANG activity also occurred illegal logging indigenous villages in the forest area of 2380 hectares it, and now lives 930 hectares due to illegal logging.

“The results of illegal sale to Malaysia, because the distance tinggal 1 – 2 hours journey,” he said.

Fever said the results of investigations in the field, the opening of oil palm plantation mode only to harvest timber. After the wood out, they left the site.

In Ketapang District, an investigative team from LPS-AIR Tanjungpura down to the village, Muara Pawan, Princess River Village Matan Hilir district, and district Delta Pawan, 23 to 27 December 2009.

“In these three locations we also found that the practice of illegal logging logging cerucuk (child wood) and wood processing,” he said.

He hoped the police did not relax their surveillance of illegal logging in West Kalimantan Province. “Because, if allowed, did not rule Kalbar in the next five years will experience a crisis of wood,” he said.

---

EU drafts reveal biofuel?s ?environmental damage?

Impact studies show for first time that European policymakers are worried about impact on tropical forests, wetlands and savannah.

By Pete Harrison, Reuters
Mar 04 2010
Source: MNN

BRUSSELS – Biodiesel and other “green” fuels that Europeans put in their cars can have unintended consequences for tropical forests and wetlands, European Union reports show ? the first evidence of EU misgivings.

The EU aims for its 500 million citizens to get about a tenth of their road fuels from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020, but some EU officials want the target reduced in a review in four years.

Modeling exercises are starting to show unwanted impacts spreading across the planet via commodity markets.

“The simulated effects of EU biofuels policies imply a considerable shock to agricultural commodity markets,” warns one draft report produced to advise policymakers.

“Current and future support of biofuels…is likely to accelerate the expansion of land under crops, particularly in Latin America and Asia,” warns another, one of 116 documents released to Reuters under freedom of information laws. More are still awaited.

“It carries the risk of significant and hardly reversible environmental damages,” adds the draft.

The warnings are not new. Environmentalists have been making them for years.

But the impact studies and e-mails show for the first time that European policymakers are also seriously worried about the impact on tropical forests, wetlands and savannah. However, they are struggling to quantify the likely damage.

“The large amount of documents and their detailed content show the Commission have been considering indirect land use change impacts very seriously,” said a spokeswoman for European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger.

“There is no definitive and official answer on the size or character of this issue at this stage,” she added.

Lobbyists from bioethanol industry group, ebio, have seized on the confusion, demanding policymakers “reject the concept.”

Meanwhile, in the European Commission, which instigates EU policy, officials are split over the wisdom of continuing with a target that was set in 2008 and already prompted billions of dollars of investment globally.

One internal letter from an agriculture official warns that taking account of the full carbon footprint of biofuels could “kill” an EU industry worth about 5 billion euros a year ($6.8 billion).

Land use change
At the center of the debate is an issue drily referred to as “indirect land use change,” which has put palm oil producers in Malaysia and Indonesia in the cross-hairs of environmentalists.

Critics say that regardless of where they are grown, biofuels compete for land with food crops, forcing farmers worldwide to expand into areas never farmed before ? sometimes by hacking into tropical rain forest or draining peatlands.

Satisfying the EU’s thirst for biofuels would need 5.2 million hectares of land by 2020, reads one report ? a bigger area than the Netherlands. But where to find that land?

Burning forests to clear the land can pump vast quantities of climate-warming emissions into the atmosphere, cancelling out any theoretical climate benefit from the fuel. Iconic species such as orangutans are also put under renewed pressure.

“Many decades may be needed before the initial induced carbon losses are compensated by the savings due to greater biofuel use,” reads one draft study by agriculture experts.

Draining peatlands can have a similar impact as soils rot and release methane gas into the atmosphere.

If just 2.4 percent of European biofuels came from palm oil grown on former peatlands, for example in Indonesia, the entire climate benefits of EU biodiesel would be wiped out, says a report by the Commission’s own research center.

“The problems are only going to get worse unless the EU rewrites its law to allow only biofuels that bring benefits to be sold in Europe,” said campaigner Nusa Urbancic at environment group T&E. “This information must be brought out into the open so there can be a proper debate.”

If the issue wasn’t complicated enough, policymakers will have to take account of numerous mitigating factors.

Increased demand for the cereals and oil seeds from which biofuels are made does not always result in farmers expanding agricultural land.

Sometimes they can increase yield by using fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.

Pressure on the land can also be relieved by using the spent grains from biofuels to feed animals ? substituting some of the maize or other feed grains that might have otherwise been grown.

(Editing by Sue Thomas)

---

Malaysia: Private zoo implicated in smuggling of orangutans

Mar 05, 2010
Source: The Star/Asia News Network

By Hilary Chiew and Joshua Foong

PETALING JAYA: Besides keeping animals illegally, the controversial zoo in a southern state was also implicated in the smuggling of the critically endangered orangutan.

It was one of the private facilities in the country that is known to have acquired smuggled orangutan in recent years where the animals were confiscated and repatriated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan).

This was confirmed by Perhilitan, thus contradicting the assertion of the zoo that the department took away a pair of its orangutan for breeding in Indonesia a year ago.

It is unclear if the zoo was penalised for the offence but it appeared that its special permit for orangutan was never revoked.

Instead, its orangutan collection was replaced; a six-year-old female was delivered in June last year followed by a 15-year-old male in December.

Perhilitan deputy director-general Misliah Mohamad Basir said the replacements were from the Bukit Merah Lake Town Resort as part of the department’s breeding loan programme, adding that it is an effort to promote eco-tourism in Johor.

In 2006, Malaysia repatriated seven Sumatran orangutan that were removed from a resort in Malacca and one from the Johor zoo following a nationwide DNA finger-printing exercise that revealed that 12 out of 58 orangutan held at seven facilities were Sumatran and the remaining 46 were Borneans.

However, in Perhilitan’s communication in 2005 with British-based NatureAlert that had taken an interest in the smuggled orangutan scandal, it was revealed that seven Borneans belonging to the Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii subspecies (found in Sarawak and western Kalimantan) would be repatriated.

---

New Book: Orangutans: Geographic Variation in Behavioral Ecology and Conservation

Review

“This book is an impressive collaborative effort with over 70 authors contributing to a series of broad comparative chapters that document what we do and do not know about the similarities and differences among separate orangutan populations in many parts of Northern Sumatra and Borneo. This is behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology at its finest.”–The Quarterly Review of Biology

Description

This book describes one of our closest relatives, the orangutan, and the only extant great ape in Asia. It is increasingly clear that orangutan populations show extensive variation in behavioural ecology, morphology, life history, and genes. Indeed, on the strength of the latest genetic and morphological evidence, it has been proposed that orangutans actually constitute two species which diverged more than a million years ago – one on the island of Sumatra the other on Borneo, with the latter comprising three subspecies.

This book has two main aims. The first is to carefully compare data from every orangutan research site, examining the differences and similarities between orangutan species, subspecies, and populations. The second is to develop a theoretical framework in which these differences and similarities can be explained. To achieve these goals the editors have assembled the world’s leading orangutan experts to rigorously synthesize and compare the data, quantify the similarities or differences, and seek to explain them.

Orangutans is the first synthesis of orangutan biology to adopt this novel, comparative approach. It analyses and compares the latest data, developing a theoretical framework to explain morphological, life history, and behavioural variation. Intriguingly, not all behavioural differences can be attributed to ecological variation between and within the two islands; relative rates of social learning also appear to have been influential. The book also emphasizes the crucial impact of human settlement on orangutans and looks ahead to the future prospects for the survival of critically endangered natural populations.

---