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JAKARTA: Workers on Indonesian palm oil plantations
are deliberately killing endangered orangutans on the island of
Borneo to stop them eating their seedlings, activists said on
Wednesday.
Hardi Baktiantoro, director of
the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP), said at least 1,500
orangutans perished in 2006, most as a result of deliberate attacks
but also due to their habitat disappearing to make way for palm oil
plantations.
“Orangutans have become the
victims of torture by plantation workers as they wander and eat palm
oil seedlings for survival,” Baktiantoro told reporters.
As plantation workers had to pay
concession companies for the loss of the seedlings, they had no
choice but to pursue the primates, he said.
Video footage screened at a press
briefing showed dead orangutans with severe head wounds allegedly
inflicted by workers as well as severely injured animals that were
treated by COP and other local rescue teams.
Baktiantoro said that “even
though this kind of cruelty violates Indonesia’s law on
biodiversity conservation, no one until now has been arrested for
this crime.”
The COP urged the Indonesian
government to immediately cancel concessions to palm oil companies
in a bid to protect the orangutans.
“Central Kalimantan is the
final frontier of the orangutan population in Indonesia. If the
forest clearing continues, we will soon lose our national
treasure,” he warned.
Scientists estimate that 34,000
orangutans remain in Central Kalimantan province on Borneo.
Vice-President Jusuf Kalla has
said that Indonesia plans to be the largest palm oil producer by
2008 amid strong demand from the global food, biofuel and chemicals
industries.
Indonesia is currently the second
largest producer after Malaysia although it has a much larger area
for plantations. The two countries account for 85 percent of world
production.
A spokesman for the Indonesian
Palm Oil Producers’ Association was not immediately available for
comment.
--AFP
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