Conservation and environmental news & publications: Indonesia
07 Aug 2008
Saving Sumatra’s Endangered Peoples
The Orang Rimba people have inhabited the jungles of Sumatra for centuries, traveling in tight-knit family groups in the Indonesian forests, hunting, fishing and collecting non-timber forest products on their traditional lands. Members of this indigenous tribe occasionally trade goods with villages on the edge of the forest, but prefer to keep to themselves. Now, as Sumatra’s forests disappear under the relentless onslaught of chainsaws and bulldozers, even keeping to themselves is becoming impossible.
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05 Aug 2008
Huge Pangolin haul shows crackdown is working
Indonesian officers last week raided the warehouse of a suspected illegal wildlife trader in Palembang, South Sumatra and have uncovered 14 tonnes of Malay Pangolins Manis javanica, leading to the arrests of 14 people.
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25 Jul 2008
Calls for crackdown after illegal fishers abandon boat on Bali reef
A 30-metre Taiwanese vessel, found abandoned on a Balinese reef badly damaged and leaking oil, has compelled WWF to issue a renewed call for the countries of the Coral Triangle to impose and enforce more stringent monitoring and accountability measures to cut down on illegal fishing.
28 May 2008
World's rarest rhinos make first video trap appearance - then toss camera
After just a month in operation, specially designed video cameras installed to capture wildlife footage in the jungles of South East Asia have twice recorded remarkable images of the world's rarest rhino accompanied by a calf. But the success was not without incident as after a short inspection, the rhino mother charged the camera installation in Ujung Kulon National Park and sent it flying.
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06 May 2008
$63 million to protect the Coral Triangle
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are joining together to support the preservation of Asia’s Coral Triangle – the world’s centre of marine life – with the GEF committing $63 million to fund conservation of this area. » Read more
17 Apr 2008
Extinct Javan elephants may have been found again - in Borneo
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia: The Borneo pygmy elephant may not be native to Borneo after all. Instead, the population could be the last survivors of the Javan elephant race – accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago, a new publication suggests.
If the Borneo pygmy elephants are in fact elephants from Java, an island more than 1,200 km (800 miles) south of their current range, it could be the first known elephant translocation in history, providing scientists with critical data from a centuries-long experiment. » Read more
25 Mar 2008
APP irregularities threaten massive climate and tiger impact
Pekanbaru, INDONESIA – One of the world’s biggest carbon stores and a key tiger habitat are threatened by a new logging road in Riau Province, Sumatra, according to an investigative report published today.
An absence of permits and other irregularities suggest that the new road cutting into Kampar peninsula is likely to be illegal, says Riau’s Eyes on the Forest group, a coalition of local NGO network Jikalahari, Walhi Riau, and WWF-Indonesia. » Read more
14 Mar 2008
More of Africa urged to boost rhino numbers
After bringing Africa’s black rhinos spectacularly back from the brink of extinction one of the world’s most successful conservation programmes is to celebrate its first decade by seeking to extend its operations to more of Africa.
“What we know from looking back at the last ten years is that sustained conservation can and does work,” says George Kampamba, WWF International’s African Rhino Programme Coordinator.
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04 Mar 2008
Chasing rhinos in Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon National Park
How hard can it be to catch a glimpse of a beast which can weigh 2,300kg and measure over 3m in length? As a WWF team discovered, it takes patience, skill and not a little ingenuity to capture the movements of this elusive giant on film. » Read more
26 Feb 2008
Pulp and palm oil the villains in Sumatra's global climate impact and local elephant losses
Pekanbaru, Sumatra: Turning just one Sumatran province's forests and peat swamps into pulpwood and palm oil plantations is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands and rapidly driving the province's elephants into extinction, a new study by WWF and partners has found. » Read more
