OCSP is a USAID-sponsored crisis response program that aims to maximize protection and long-term survival of viable orangutan populations in the wild. The program will work to arrest, reduce, or possibly to eliminate the threats to orangutans as well as address the major drivers behind those threats.
Pemerintah Indonesia telah menunjukkan kepemimpinannya dalam upaya konservasi orangutan dan habitatnya kepada dunia internasional, dengan meluncurkan Strategi dan Rencana Aksi Nasional Konservasi Orangutan Indonesia dalam ajang konferensi untuk perubahan iklim (UNFCCC) di Bali, pada bulan Desember 2007 lalu. Read More
Download Strategi dan Rencana Aksi Konservasi Orangutan Indonesia (PDF File, 3 MB)
Dec 23, 2008
Press Release: Wildlife Crime: Kejahatan Kehutanan Tiga Besar Dunia dan Terkait Kejahatan Illegal Logging
Kejahatan terhadap satwa liar dilindungi (wildlife crime) adalah kejahatan kehutanan terbesar ketiga di dunia dengan nilai perdagangan yang mencapai sekitar 180 juta dollar Amerika per tahun secara global dan 9 trilyun rupiah per tahun secara nasional. Demikian simpulan dari acara bedah catatan akhir tahun konservasi orangutan yang diselenggarakan pada peluncuran media center satu-satunya di Indonesia untuk konservasi, ICMC (Indonesian Conservation Media Center), Selasa, 23 Desember 2008 di Hotel Nikko, Jakarta.
Dec 17, 2008Semiloka Peningkatan Partisipasi Publik dalam Mendorong Penegakan Hukum yang Sistematis
Kegiatan ini direncanakan akan dilaksanakan selama 2 hari pada pertengahan bulan Desember 2008 (diperkirakan 17-18 Desember 2008) di kota Medan, dengan pembagian waktu yaitu: hari pertama Workshop, hari kedua Seminar dan Pendeklarasian KPSL serta nomor pengaduan
TOR klik disini (TOR MS Word, 44 KB)
Dec 11, 2008Regional Meeting Orangutan Action Plan di Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam
Strategi dan Rencana Aksi Orangutan Indonesia 2007 - 2017 telah dicanangkan oleh Presiden Republik Indonesia di salah satu event pada Konferensi Perubahan Iklim Dunia di Bali pada Desember 2007. Pencanangan ini sebagai bentuk komitment dan langkah serius pemerintah Republik Indonesia dalam pelestarian kenaekaragaman hayati.
- Jaminan Rp 1 Miliar, Pelihara Hewan Langka Jadi Legal
- Big bucks, trust needed in orangutan trade
- Orangutans: From illegal trade to conservation
- Pressure mounting to save orangutan
- Saving the endangered orangutan must be a national priority
- Sawit Semakin Mengancam Orangutan
- Populasi Orangutan Menurun Tajam
- Govt urged to enforce Bali plan to protect orangutan
- Study finds Indonesian orangutan populations declining sharply
- Study: Orangutan populations declining sharply
Oct 23, 2009
Orangutans struggle to survive as palm oil booms
By Beh Lih Yi (AFP) – 1 day ago
KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — Cinta, a baby orangutan found lost and alone in a vast Borneo palm oil plantation, now clings to a tree at a sanctuary for the great apes, staring intently at dozens of tourists.
She is one of the casualties of the boom in palm oil — used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine — which has seen swathes of jungle felled in Borneo, an island split between Malaysia and Indonesia.
There are about 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 80 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in Malaysia’s Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.
A 2007 assessment by the United Nations Environment Program warned the charismatic red-haired apes will be virtually eliminated in the wild within two decades if current deforestation trends continue.
Stung by criticism of its environmental record, Malaysian palm oil industry officials pledged at a conference earlier this month to fund the establishment of wildlife corridors that experts say could help save the species.
“The major issue we face with orangutans today is what we called the fragmented population,” said Marc Ancrenaz from the environmental group Hutan.
“True enough there are 11,000 orangutans in (Sabah) but they are split up in many small populations, and many of these populations are not connected any more,” he told the conference near Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah.
An aerial survey carried out by Hutan and wildlife authorities in eastern Sabah last year revealed some 1,000 orangutan treetop “nests” located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.
Isolated from each other, the tiny communities are at risk of inbreeding and also of simply becoming lost in the vastness of the plantations — just like three-year-old Cinta and the five other young apes at the Tuaran sanctuary.
After becoming separated from their mothers, they were rescued from certain death and sent to the forested reserve, situated near a string of luxury beachside resorts north of Kota Kinabalu.As well as destroying their jungle habitat, the expansion of palm oil, which now covers nearly one fifth of Sabah alone, poses other risks to the endangered species.
Orangutans that damage the palm oil fruits can be hunted down and killed, and it is quite common for young apes to be captured and kept as pets by villagers living alongside the plantations.
“They either go into the oil palm, and start eating the oil palm fruits, or get pushed into a smaller and smaller area,” said Eric Meijaard from the Indonesia-based People and Nature Consulting International.
“What quite often happens is that the oil palm concession basically will ask for these orangutans to be shot so they get rid of the problem.”
Malaysia is the world’s second-largest exporter of palm oil after Indonesia, and the industry is the country’s third largest export earner, raking in 65.2 billion ringgit (19 billion dollars) last year.
Elements in the industry have accused Western lobby groups of trying to smear palm oil in order to boost rival products from developed countries.
Bernard Dompok, the plantation industry and commodities minister, appeared at the conference to completely reject claims that palm oil is responsible for deforestation and the displacement of endangered species.
“I wish to stress that all these allegations are unjustified,” he said, insisting Malaysia has taken a comprehensive approach to balance conservation with the development of palm oil.
Representatives from the top industry body, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), said they should not be held accountable for the dwindling orangutan population.
Its chief executive officer Yusof Basiron said that if the world stopped using palm oil, biodiversity would suffer further because substitutes like rapeseed and soyabean would require more land to be cleared.
“We can take some of the blame but not all of it,” he said.
Sabah Wildlife Department director Laurentius Ambu said that wildlife corridors, which would enable orangutans to move across the landscape, are vital if the apes are to co-exist with palm oil.
“There is an urgent need to reconnect all forests through corridors… and to reconnect orangutan populations that are isolated by palm oil fields,” he said.
The MPOC pledged to help to fund the corridors, but as there is no binding commitment, and no clarity on how the ambitious project would be funded overall, many environmentalists are sceptical.
Ancrenaz said there is no way to stop the spread of palm oil, which environmentalists say is found in one in 10 products on supermarket shelves, including bread, crisps and cereals as well as lipstick and soap.
“Oil palm is here to stay. There is no point in fighting against development, but we also want orangutans to stay,” he said.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
Original source : click here
Sep 7, 2009Indonesia’s Carbon Goals are Achiveable, OCSP’s Meijaard Tells Radio Australia
Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - Indonesia’s government-backed National Climate Change Council, or NCCC, announced this week an ambitious 20-year roadmap for the nation to cut its carbon emissions by more than 40 percent from 2005 levels, with an emphasis on reducing deforestation, degradation of peat land, and power use.
The NCCC calculated Indonesia’s emissions to be 2.3 gigatons (billions of tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005, and forecasted them to reach 2.8 gigatons in 2020 and 3.6 gigatons by 2030. But Indonesia could reduce emissions by as much as 2.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, according to the NCCC, through the adoption of 150 different programs, in effect bringing the level down to 1.3 gigatons.
The NCCC estimated it would cost more than US$30 billion to reach the goal. Deciding how to pay for the necessary programs is one of the challenges Indonesia will ponder in the months leading up to December’s United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, at which Indonesia is expected formally to present its position on climate change.
DAI subcontractor Erik Meijaard, a forest scientist with the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Orangutan Conservation Services Program (OCSP), said in an interview with Radio Australia that he believed Indonesia, one of the world’s largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, could make a serious attempt at reaching the reduction target.
“I think it all comes down to political will,” Meijaard said. “If the government is serious about this and gets the support from the different departments and the different levels of provincial district government, certainly they can make it work. I’ve seen Indonesia do these things before, so I’ve got confidence that they can pull it off.”
OCSP, a rainforest protection project, implements policy reform, law enforcement, public outreach, and site-based conservation measures that reduce the destruction of Indonesia’s rich biodiversity, a loss that threatens the remaining populations of wild orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra and greatly reduces the habitat’s carbon-storing capacity.
The link between orangutans and carbon was recognized by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when, during the 2007 climate conference, he launched the Indonesian orangutan action plan, which was facilitated by OCSP and others.
“If I may draw an analogy, the polar bear represents the problem of melting ice-caps, where there is little we can directly do to help,” said President Yudhoyono. “The orangutan represents a solution, an interlinked process in which we stop deforestation, save endangered forest wildlife, store greenhouse gas emissions. If we do all this right, we will ultimately save polar bears and the entire earth.”
In addition to calling for a halt to rainforest destruction, the NCCC is advocating more use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and efficiency improvements to internal combustion engines, electrical appliances, lighting, and water heating.
“This [report] will provide guidance for the environment ministry and the council to move forward to follow the world’s trend to enter a low carbon development growth,” said environment minister Rachmat Witoelar, according to Reuters.
Under an emerging United Nations scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), emerging nations such as Indonesia can potentially earn billions of dollars by setting aside and rehabilitating their forests, and selling carbon offsets to richer nations to help them meet their emissions goals. A global framework for REDD is expected to be agreed upon in Copenhagen.
A new component of OCSP, the Private Sector Sustainability Facility (PSSF), is strengthening private sector partnerships for forest and biodiversity conservation, and working to engage Indonesia’s private sector in orangutan conservation initiatives by, for example, encouraging current trends toward valuation of natural resources — a critical component of the REDD process.
Meijaard told Radio Australia that Indonesia has made strides toward mitigating the increasing rate of pollution caused by illegal logging and by its lucrative palm oil industry, for which carbon-absorbing rainforests are razed and burned, and peat lands drained, to make way for oil palm farms.
“A couple of years back everyone saw something that simply wouldn’t be resolved; the financial interests in illegal logging were just too big, the governance was too poor, and it just wouldn’t change,” Meijaard said. “The government took it very seriously and involved army and police very effectively, and I wouldn’t say illegal logging has disappeared, but certainly, from what I can see in the field, it’s come down a lot.”
Indonesia’s government is aware of the complexities faced in designing, paying for, and implementing the programs recommended by the NCCC, Meijaard observed.
“It’s a simple idea, but so many things have to fall in place,” he said. “The whole carbon accounting, your land-use planning, the poor governance that’s going to be in place in the areas where the savings have to made, and the avoiding of deforestation — it’s a real challenge.”
To read and listen to the story by Radio Australia, click here
Jan 29, 2009Kaltim Bentuk Forum Konservasi Orangutan
SAMARINDA, KAMIS — Forum Konservasi Orangutan Kalimantan Timur dibentuk dalam pertemuan multipihak di Samarinda, Kamis (29/1). Forum diharapkan menjadi wadah komunikasi intensif pemerintah, lembaga swadaya masyarakat, perguruan tinggi, dan pengusaha yang ingin menyelamatkan orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) dari kepunahan.
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Perlindungan terhadap orangutan sesungguhnya merupakan upaya perlindungan terhadap hutan sebagai tempat hidup orangutan. Hilangnya habitat bersama sumber-sumber penghidupan lain yang melekat di dalamnya, tidak hanya menjadi ancaman utama bagi keberadaan orangutan, tetapi juga berdampak bagi masa depan umat manusia.
Dalam upaya membangun pemahaman bersama mengenai pentingnya konservasi orangutan dan habitatnya, sejumlah persoalan dan ancaman yang ada, serta pentingnya upaya perubahan kebijakan untuk mendukung konservasi orangutan dan habitatnya, OCSP bekerjasama dengan ProMedia Indonesia menyelengarakan program radio Sketsa Alam. Read More
Nov 3, 2008
Lokalatih Jurnalisme Lingkungan Untuk Konservasi Orangutan Dan Habitatnya
AJI Jakarta dan ProMedia melalui dana grant dari OCSP menyelenggarakan lokalatih untuk wartawan mengenai konservasi orangutan dan habitatnya, yang telah dilaksanakan pada bulan Juli lalu. More »
Jul 13, 2008Orangutan Dilindungi Tapi Tak Terlindungi
Depok-Kompas. Link Orangutan telah ditetapkan sebagai satwa dilindungi. Hal tersebut siatur dalam Undang-undang 5 Tahun 1990 tentang Konservasi Sumberdaya Alam Hayati beserta Ekosistemnya dan PP 7 tahun 1999 tentang Pengawetan Jenis Tumbuhan dan Satwa. More »
Pasca Harimau Jawa dan Bali Punah: Jumlah Harimau Sumatera Kini Tinggal 250 Ekor
Medan, (Analisa) Link. Dulu, Indonesia pernah memiliki tiga subspecies harimau dari delapan subspecies yang ada di dunia, yakni harimau Jawa, Bali dan Sumatera (Panthera Tigris Sumatrae).
