Save the Tripa Peat Swamp and Orangutans
Target: President of Indonesia
Sponsored by: The Orangutan Project
Friends of the Earth Indonesia have taken the Aceh Governor and large palm oil company (PT, Kallista Alam) to court for illegally approving the destruction of Tripa Peat Swamp.
This peat swap is burning even as you are reading this, we must protect this area, draining the peat has left locals without clean water, children in the villages have skin diseases, livelihoods destroyed, all for palm oil. If this is not stopped right now, the Orangutans and forest in the area will be completely wiped out in a few months.
The Indonesian Governor of Aceh, Irwandi Yusuf, issued a permit to a local oil palm company, PT Kallista Alam, to convert 1,605ha of deep peat in the Tripa peat swamps on the west coast of Aceh into an oil palm plantation.
This area is known to have the highest densities of Sumatran orangutans in the world.
The Tripa peat swamps are part of the Leuser Ecosystem, which was designated in 2008 as a National Strategic Area for environmental protection.
Please email/fax/write to the Indonesian President: presiden@ri.go.id and CC your email to the Indonesian embassy in Australia:indonemb@kbri-canberra.org.au and tell him to uphold the law and protect the Tripa Peat Swamps of Sumatra
Having visted Sumatra and travelled through the Aceh Provence in 2008 spending a great deal of time in the Gunung Leuser I am appalled to read of the destruction of the Tripa Peat Swamps. I experienced the privellege of tracking the majestic and beautiful Orangutans in that region and to think that an already dwindling environmental resource is once again being placed at risk due to the greed of a very small number of people sickens me. The Orangutans are if we believe the evolutionist theories our closest living species and to see or even to consider loosing them to the greed of the world it makes me wonder are we as humans really the most intelligent of species? I know when being up close to an Orangutan and by close I mean an arms length or less when you look at them they look right back at you. Not in a vague sense of looking but in the sense of an enquiring mind as there is definitely something going on behind those eyes. I know and understand the economic and financial reasons for the production of palm oil so it is not all about the Governor of Aceh or even the oil companies but the rest of the world to place less reliance on the use of palm oil!!! The future of this animal, relative of ours lies with us the people of the world!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think the answer is? How do we stop these huge palm oil producers, I was told that just by not buying products with PO will not make a difference. So am at a loss as of how to help.
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