Orang-Utans in the Oily Palms (of Their Hands)
Concern has been expressed (http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2049667,00.html) about the sudden escalation of permissions to clear rainforest lands in Malaysia and Indonesia to plant oil palms to supply 'green fuels'. It has been estimated that 98% of the forests will be gone by 2022. There has even been a suggestion that the granted permissions are sometimes used as an excuse by loggers to extract trees they have been unable to take until now (without, in some cases, actually planting oil palms on the cleared land). Considerable amounts of the 'greenhouse gas' carbon dioxide are released by drying (as a result of clearing, road building etc) or even burning of the peat in the original forests (e.g. in central Kalimantan). A new UN report 'The Last Stand of the Orangutan: State of Emergency' has emphasized that the loss of lowland forest has made made operating release programmes impossible (it has been estimated that wild orang-utans are annually killed at the rate of 5-10,000 in Borneo and Sumatra because they eat young oil palms and are perceived as pests). They might well be killed off with other 'flagship' species such as the Sumatran tiger and the Asian elephant. Indonesia believes that Europe must help financially if it wants to reduce some of the negative effects of the increased interest in this biofuel.
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