What you have written below is heartbreaking and should strike at the very soul of humanity in Indonesia. I support every word that you have written. Indonesia is so privileged to play host and guardian to these wonderful beings, but along with that comes a tremendous responsibility. I sincerely hope that there can be a reversal of the damage that has already been done and that the murder of our nearest living being ceases before it is too late.

Not only Orang Utans but also tigers have pretty much the same destiny than them. Their natural habitat is getting destroyed which forces them to look in villages for food, after which villagers are trapping and for a quick end killing them - and also there illegal trade with his animals, either alive as prestige objects for certain people or exported for Chinese medicine. Also indigenous tribes are losing their places and ending up as the unwanted in cities! Almost daily reports can be heard and read about illegal logging and when I recently visited Riau the air was smoke filled all day long due to burning forests close by (as could be seen when the plane finally managed to leave the airport). I do believe that the state as developing country cannot excuse this genocide on animals. But again, money talks!

redapes..........

What you have written below is heartbreaking and should strike at the very soul of humanity in Indonesia. I support every word that you have written. Indonesia is so privileged to play host and guardian to these wonderful beings, but along with that comes a tremendous responsibility. I sincerely hope that there can be a reversal of the damage that has already been done and that the murder of our nearest living being ceases before it is too late.

“As a developing country, Indonesia needs to use its land and all natural resources to provide people with better revenue,” Agreed, we all agree. Nothing quite like stating the obvious is there?

However the palm oil plantations are not the only answer. It is made to sound like it is. The expansions should reduce dramatically now and attention be focuses on other resources suitable for sustained economic development.

We have mining, good turn over, we have plam oil at current levels a good turnover, and several others which provide diversity. It should now be time to expand the diversity and stop expanding so dramatically in areas of so much destruction.

The fishing indistry would if consolidated and protected from poaching provide an incredible, durable and renewable income revenue and untold numbers of jobs and related industries if the same focus was turned on it as on Palm oil.

It's time to stop using the same tired old " sustainable economic development in rural areas " excuse. There are other less destructive, less carbon unfriendly and more widely divergent natural resources here both natural and human.

The palm oil industry is guilty of the most heinous ecological atrocities imaginable, including the systematic genocide of orangutans. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only place where these gentle, intelligent creatures live, and the cultivation of palm oil has directly led to the brutal deaths of thousands of individuals as the industry has expanded into previously undisturbed areas of rainforest.

When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are typically shot on sight. These peaceful, sentient beings are beaten, burned, mutilated, tortured and often eaten. Babies are torn off their dying mothers so they can be sold on the black market as illegal pets to wealthy families who see them as status symbols of their own power and prestige. This has been documented time and again.

To pretend the palm oil industry is sustainable is laughable. Even the World Bank and Unilever know otherwise... Time to come clean...

Visit the Orangutan Outreach website to learn more: www.redapes.org