'ORANG-UTANS' HOMES WILL BE GONE BY 2022'

Orang-tans could have nowhere left to live within a decade, a report has revealed.

New satellite images have uncovered levels of rainforest destruction in South East Asia which are 30 per cent faster than previously feared, says the United Nations.

It has repeated EIA’s recent call for countries, in particular Indonesia, to be helped in their fight against illegal logging.

“The rate of decline of the forests is the most alarming we have seen yet, anywhere in the world," said Christian Nellemann, one of the authors of the ‘Last Stand of the Orang-utan’ report.

The number of orang-utans, once common in the region has plummeted to only 7,000 in Sumatra and 45,000 in Borneo.

Burning of rainforests, often to make way for bio-fuel plantations like palm oil, is multiplying the threat – as well as adding hugely to global warming.

Orang-utans are often killed by loggers or captured and sold to foreign zoos and parks.
As the apes only breed once every seven years, it is feared their numbers could be seriously hit while their natural habitats vanish, says the report by the UN’s Environment Programme.

It had been estimated their habitats would be gone by 2032 but that date has now been put at 2022.

UNEP praised Indonesia’s recent crackdowns and arrests of illegal loggers but said it was only a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated 2.1 million hectares of forest cleared every year.

UNEP has echoed EIA’s calls for more help for Indonesia in the fight against illegal logging gangs.

Earlier this year, EIA’s report ‘The Thousand Headed Snake’ highlighted how corruption and failures in the Indonesian police, military and judicial system were letting timber barons off the hook.

The UNEP report was presented to the CITES conference on endangered species this week.

Speaking from The Hague, head of EIA’s Forest Campaigns Julian Newman said: “It’s not just up to Indonesia to solve this problem, it’s an international issue.

“A lot of the timber goes to international markets – to China, Malaysia and the EU. We need to close these loopholes and introduce a ban on importing illegal timber.”

It is thought 88 per cent of logging in Indonesia is illegal and is even being carried out in 37 of its 41 national parks, netting some £2 billion a year for logging and smuggling syndicates.

The UN has repeated EIA’s call for more resources for Indonesia to strengthen its enforcement and employ more forest wardens, alongside a global customs crackdown on illegal timber.

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Salvage Logging, Replanting Worse

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, scientists have found that logging big dead trees after a wildfire and planting young ones makes future fires worse, at least for the first 10 or 20 years while the young trees create a volatile new source of fuel.

The findings by scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University raise questions about the long-standing practice of salvage logging on national forests at a time when global warming is expected to increase the size and numbers of wildfires and the annual cost of fighting them is running around $1 billion.

In the first study of its kind, scientists examined satellite images, aerial photographs, and records of logging and replanting to look at areas that burned in the 1987 Silver fire in southwestern Oregon and again in the 2002 Biscuit fire.

"It was the conventional wisdom that salvage logging and planting could reduce the risk of high-severity fires," said Jonathan R. Thompson, a doctoral candidate in forest science at Oregon State, who was lead author of the study appearing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our data suggest otherwise."
They suggested that the large stands of closely packed young trees created by replanting are a much more volatile source of fuel for decades to come than the large dead trees that are cut down and hauled away in salvage logging operations.

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Are You Eating Dinner on a Piece of Rainforest?

Love your new dining room table ... but did you ask the salesman whether it's made from chopped up rainforest trees?

A growing number of furniture shoppers are doing just that when they buy new home decor, concerned about the effects of shrinking rainforests on global warming and the extinction of rare species of flora and fauna that inhabit these forests.

"There's a lot of inexpensive places where you can get furniture from, but I ask myself - where is it being manufactured, where does the wood come from?" said Stephanie Zhong, a 38-year-old designer from Los Angeles.

"If people were more aware of it, they would choose to be a little bit more informed about what they are sitting on, the table they are working at," Zhong added.

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Logging May Wreck Orangutan Forests in a Decade, UN Says

THE HAGUE -- Illegal logging could destroy the last forest strongholds of orangutans within a decade and the world should do more to help Indonesia halt smuggling both of apes and of timber, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Burning of forests, sometimes to clear land to grow palm oil for biofuels, was adding to threats to endangered orangutans which live on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, according to a report issued at a U.N. wildlife conference.

"Indonesia cannot and should not have to deal with this issue alone," Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said in a statement. He urged more funding for wardens and a global customs crackdown on illegal trade.

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