SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon

Back in Feburary this year, campaigners celebrated as the then shadow Environmental Minister Penny Sharpe announced Labor’s support for a Great Koala National Park (GKNP), stretching along the Mid-North coast from Kempsey to Coffs Harbour.

The purpose of the park, which was first proposed more than a decade ago, is to protect critical habit for the koala and other threatened species.

Koala numbers in NSW plummeted by more than half between 2000 and 2020 due to logging, land clearing, drought and devastating bushfires. A NSW Parliamentary Inquiry in 2020 heard scientific evidence that koalas could be extinct by 2050 unless there are dramatic changes.

NSW is the only mainland state not to have a plan to stop logging of native forests, essential koala habitats.

Hopes raised by Labor’s narrow election win in March this year were quickly dashed. Hope has now turned to anger with 200 people marching in protest in the mid-north NSW city of Coffs Harbour earlier this month and nation-wide rallies.

In Sydney, hundreds marched through the streets of Marrickville to a protest outside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electoral office.

NSW Forestry Corporation steps up logging
When she received a petition calling for a moratorium on logging within the GKNP in June, Minister for Environment Penny Sharpe reiterated her commitment to the Park but confirmed that logging would not stop.

Instead the government-owned, NSW Forestry Corporation (NSWFC) has stepped up its logging inside the proposed GKNP, including in areas containing long-lasting koala hubs, carting off huge tree trunks and leaving devastated land in its wake. These operations are losing millions each year.

The campaign consists of a network of local community groups, such as the Friends of Orara East Forest, some of which conduct weekly vigils; the Belligen Activist Network and the Knitting Nannas, as well as larger environmental groups such as the National Parks Association.

It is supported by the NSW Greens, Animal Justice and some Independent MPs including MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich. Further north, the North East Forest Alliance has taken legal action to stop the NSWFC logging 77 percent of the Braemar forest, part of the proposed Sandy Creek National Park where koalas survive despite long standing koala communities being reduced by 70 percent in the 2019/2020 bush fires.

On June 28, a broad-based group of MPs and NGOS advocating for the park held a press conference calling on politicians across all parties to support a moratorium on the ongoing destruction of the GKNP and immediately start to work on transition plans for timber workers and development of the Park, including with local First Nations people.

But Minister Sharpe reiterated her intention to allow logging to continue.

A few days later, logging began in the Orara East and Boambee Forests, both of which are inside the Great Koala National Park. Vigils and petitions were clearly not working.

Civil disobedience begins
On July 7, three HSC students on school holidays locked on to heavy machinery and a full barrel of cement in Orara East Forest. At the same time in Boambee Forest, two Knitting Nannas locked onto heavy machinery. Another protester occupied a tree. In all, logging was delayed by 10 hours.

Seventeen-year-old Mason said: “I’m here on behalf of myself and my 14-year-old brother. The rate at which our government is auctioning off natural forests is frightening, and I feel powerless to do anything about it.

“We’ve tried protesting, and we can’t vote, which is why we feel driven to take this action against these machines ripping our trees down. The government can stop this and we just need them to take notice.”

The three students were arrested but released from custody with cautions and no charges laid.

On the same day, two Knitting Nannas Christine Degan and Susan Doyle were arrested in the Boambee State Park. Both are veterans of vigils and protests aimed at stopping logging and for action on climate change.

In desperation, they took a further step. They slept overnight in a home near the perimeter of the State Park.

Before day break, Degan and Doyle and supporters walked up a steep hill, using torches to find their way through the bush to the logging camp. There they were met by an angry security guard who burst into an aggressive tirade, accusing them of being terrorists.

While two supporters calmed him down, the two women were locked onto equipment. There they sat in two small beach chairs in drizzling rain and cold for eight hours until the NSW police arrived and arrested them.

The two friends were released on condition that they did not contact each other, except through a lawyer, or go near any forests were logging was underway.

Earlier this month, they were each fined a total of $500 for entering and refusing to leave a forest.

Battle moves to Newry Forest
A vigil camp is now in its third week in the Upper reaches of the Kalang River where other sites have recently been made “active” for logging.

Nearer the coast, the the battle front has moved to the Newry Forest near Belligen. For nine months in 2021, the community had joined the local Gumbaynggir elders in a blockade that successfully delay logging operations.

Although Newry is  a core part of the GKNP, the NSWFC approved 2500 hectares of the forest for logging in May this year. In July, the listing went from “approved” to “active,” leading the Bellingen action group to organise a workshop to upgrade their direct action tactics.

On July 31, local Gumbaynggirr Elders, Traditional Custodians and supporters established a peaceful protest camp on sacred land within the forest. They were met with armed police and steel gates preventing the public from entering the forest.

A Gumbarnggirr spokesperson told the National Indigenous Times that the NSW Forestry Corporation (NSWFC) was endangering koala and possum gliders that are their totem animals.

“The values of Newry to the Gumbaynggirr people are precious, priceless and absolutely irreplaceable. …There is a desperate need for these appalling industrial logging operations to be stopped or we simply won’t have koalas left and priceless and irreplaceable Gumbaynggirr values and cultural heritage will be destroyed.”

Gumbaynggirr elder arrested after locking on
On the second day of logging, two younger protesters locked onto machinery. On the third day, Wilkarr Kurikuta, a Ngemba, Wangan and Jangalingou man, locked-on to a harvester.

“I’m here for my old people and my sister, a proud Gumbaynggirr woman, to exercise my sovereign right to protect country,” he said.

He told the NSW government that it should expect resistance until an end is put to the destruction of his people’s land and waters. He was violently removed, charged and held overnight in a cell.

The next day, two more young people locked onto industrial logging machinery in Newry Forest, again halting logging. They were arrested, charged and released. Logging had so far been disrupted on six days.

On August 2, Greens MP Sue Higginson moved a motion in the NSW Legislative Council to confirm the NSW government’s intention to protect critical koala habitat, noting that the Newry State Forest was “identified for protection in 2017 as having three koala hubs” and that a three-day survey had found five threatened plant species, evidence of koalas and high quality habitat for threatened koalas, the Glossy Black Cockatoo and Greater Glider.

She described the “industrial scale logging operation” as happening under “martial law”.

“The community on the front line are not doing this because it is fun or because they want to, or because they dislike forestry workers or police,” she told Parliament.

“They are doing it as an act of hope in the democratic process in which they believe — the genuine hope that they will be seen and heard and that their actions will lead to political outcomes that protect this forest, which the government has promised to protect but is currently destroying.”

Labor opposed the motion with the Minister for the Environment Sharpe moving amendments which removed any reference to the factual core of the motion described above. Her amendments were passed with Liberal National Party support.

A reduced anodyne motion recording commitment to protect the koala was then passed.

In her response Penny Sharpe referred to “internal work” being done to proceed with the Park. She said she was working closely with the Minister for Forestry Tara Moriarty.

This will further concern forest campaigners because in Moriarty’s speech in support of Sharpe’s amendments, she supported the current logging operations as being done in line with sustainable ecologically sound forest management, with the NSW Environmental Protection Authority ensuring compliance with all policies.

This is the very issue that is being contested by the movement to save the forests. It suggests that Moriarty may not accept the findings of a recent NSW Auditor-General’s report which found that both the NSW Forest Corporation and the NSW Environmental Protection Authority were insufficiently resourced, trained and empowered to enforce compliance and that NSWFC’s voluntary efforts did not extend to satisfactorily ensuring contractors do not breach regulations and policies.

This issue is already before the courts. The North Eastern Alliance, which has previously taken successful court actions during the 34 year period it has been campaigning to protect forests, is arguing that the NSW Land and Environment Court should set aside approvals to log sections of the Braemar and Myrtle Forests further north at the Sandy Creek State Park which is also a proposed national park in the Richmond Valley.

The NSWFC has agreed to halt logging in these forests which are home to koalas and more than 23 threatened species, until the case is decided. The Alliance will be represented by the Environmental Defenders’ Office.

Alliance President Dailan Pugh, who has 44 years experience in protecting forests, said that “Myrtle and Braemar State forests are both identified as Nationally Important Koala Areas that were badly burnt in the 2019/20 wildfires, killing many of their resident koalas.

“Despite this, recent surveys have proved that most patches of preferred koala feed trees are still being utilised by Koalas. Logging of more than 75% of the larger feed trees … that koalas need to rebuild their numbers will be devastating for populations already severely impacted by the fires.”

The Environmental Defenders’ Office is arguing that the logging operations are unlawful for several reasons: because the operations are not ecologically sustainable, because Forestry Corp failed to consider whether they would be ecologically sustainable, and because the proposed use of “voluntary conditions” is in breach of the logging rules.

NEFA is asking the court to declare the logging approvals invalid and to restrain NSWFC from conducting the operations.

Pugh said: “We have been asking the NSW Government for independent pre-logging surveys on State forests to identify and protect core Koala habitat and climate change refugia, and protection of Preferred Koala Feed Trees (select species >30 cm diameter) in linking habitat. Our requests are falling on deaf ears, we hope this will make them listen.”

While Labor politicians insist that the logging is consistent with protecting biodiversity, the situation looks different to campaigners on the ground. Degan describes seeing crushed casuarinas which provide habitat for the Glossy Black Cockatoo when she visited the Newry Forest for the first time in four weeks.

“It’s just a vast area with trash that’s a metre deep, that no footed animal can get across. I couldn’t get across and I’d break an ankle or shoulder falling over. There’s no way that animals on foot could traverse that debris that’s left behind. It may be regrowth native forest but after 50 years it provides substantial decent habitat.”

Down in Hobart, another forest activist Collette Hamson is spending three months in prison because she broke conditions of a suspended sentence. Before she went to prison she said:

“The reason I commit these offences [is] because I am terrified of the worsening climate crisis. I am not a menace to society, yet here I am facing a jail term . . . I am not giving a finger to the entire judicial system, I am standing up for the forests, for takayna, a safer planet and if that makes me a dangerous criminal then I think we are going to need bigger prisons.”

Labor plans lengthy consultation
While the Minister for Environment Penny Sharpe may be able to remove any mention of protests in a parliamentary motion, it is another thing to deal with the wave of civil disobedience that is likely to continue until native forest logging is halted. Sharpe says that A$80 million has been set aside for GKNP and planning is underway.

City Hub asked the Department of Environment to confirm that no consultation was yet underway and on what date one consultation would begin.

A National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesperson replied, stating that development of the park “will be informed by expert scientific advice, an independent economic assessment of impacts on jobs and the local community, and an inclusive consultation process with stakeholdes . . .

“Consultation with stakeholders will occur in the future, with specific timings still to be determined.”

This lengthy process could take most of NSW Labor’s term in government ending in 2027. Unless logging is halted while planning occurs, the proposed National Park along with threatened species it is supposed to protect could be decimated before it arrives.

Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and supported the Greens in this year’s NSW election. This article was first published by CityHub on August 15 and is republished with permission.  Wendy Bacon’s investigative journalism blog.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Conflict group of islands in Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay province cannot be sold to foreign interests, Parliament has been told.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Lands John Rosso said yesterday the privately-owned controversial islands would instead be turned into an environmental marine conservation area.

Irked by the potential sale of the islands for a substantial amount of money, Rosso has issued a ministerial directive for an immediate investigation into the acquisition of titles and the alleged sale.

The 21 islands have been owned by retired Australian businessman Ian Gowrie-Smith who placed the atolls on the open market.

They include among the named islands Panasesa Island, Madiboiboi, Gabugabutau, Tubinagurm Island, Lutmatavi Island, Panaboal, Ginara Island, Panarakuum Island, Panarakiim Motina, Muniara Island, Auriria Island, Panamaiia, Parapaniian, Panaiiaii, Kisa, Itamarina and Ilai Islands.

The Conflict islands are in PNG which put them closer to the Australian mainland and the potential sale has raised alarm bells in that country, which has been wary of the controversial security pact between Solomon Islands and China — and also China’s rise in the Pacific.

In Parliament yesterday, Kiriwina-Goodenough MP Douglas Tomuriesa took Rosso to task, demanding action from the government to stop the sale of these atolls because of the cultural significance and traditional values they had on the local people.

Traditional hunting grounds
“This group of islands is the traditional hunting grounds for our people and our people cannot be allowed into these islands due to the owner being strict,” Tomuriesa said.

“These are traditionally resting and hunting grounds. Today, our people cannot do that.”

It is understood the islands were being sold for substantial amounts, a sale that has not only angered the locals but caused heartbeat to Australia as it poses a national and regional security risk to its sovereignty, given the Chinese conglomerates that have allegedly put up their hands to buy the islands.

Rosso told Parliament that these islands would never be sold under his watch and that the government would make sure they would be kept as conservative and protected areas.

He warned that the investigations could also lead to the revocation of the lease but was subject to the completion once initiated.

“The Conflict islands cannot be sold to non-citizens and that is my stand, and the PNG government stand, there will be an investigation to establish the status and the way the title was awarded in the first instance,” Rosso said.

“The islands will be declared as a conservative and protected area to be administered by special purpose vehicle to protect it for our children to benefit from in the future.

Status of titles probe
“I have already asked the Department of Lands to institute an investigation to establish the status of these titles which are freehold and ascertain the way these titles were created and granted to, we believe, a non-citizen.

“I would like to encourage the current titleholder to come forward voluntarily and discuss these issues with me.

“The position of the government of PNG through the Minister for Lands and Physical Planning is that these islands and the sea belong to the broader community because it is part of their marine and sea life to sustain the marine and pristine ecosystem.

“Therefore, PNG as a custodian of these parts of marine eco-system intends to declare the Conflict Islands as a conservation protected area to be administered by a special purpose vehicle that has the same status as Australia Great Barrier Reef, that is my view and I will be pursuing.

“I will be working closely with the Milne Bay provincial government to ensure that this is carried out.

“For the temporary timing, I will not allow the Conflict islands to be sold under my watch.

“I will be pursuing properly talks with the current owner to see a way forward for this but with a very firm view that we will not allow these islands to be sold, likewise other protected areas in PNG.

“The Conflict islands, the sales and transfer can be made only to a PNG citizen.

“How did the titleholder, believed to be [not] a PNG citizen come to own these freehold titles for 20 years.”

Gorethy Kenneth is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the Second Global Ocean Conference opens today in Lisbon, governments in Asia and the Pacific must seize the opportunity to enhance cooperation and solidarity to address a host of challenges that endanger what is a lifeline for millions of people in the region.

If done right ocean action will also be climate action but this will require working in concert on a few fronts.

First, we must invest in and support science and technology to produce key solutions. Strengthening science-policy interfaces to bridge practitioners and policymakers contributes to a sound understanding of ocean-climate synergies, thereby enabling better policy design, an important priority of the Indonesian Presidency of the G20 process. Additionally policy support tools can assist governments in identifying and prioritizing actions through policy and SDG tracking and scenarios development.

We must also make the invisible visible through ocean data: just three of ten targets for the goal on life below water are measurable in Asia and the Pacific. Better data is the foundation of better policies and collective action. The Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) is an innovative multi-stakeholder collective established to enable countries and other stakeholders to go beyond GDP and to measure and manage progress towards ocean sustainable development.

Solutions for low-carbon maritime transport are also a key part of the transition to decarbonization by the middle of the century. Countries in Asia and the Pacific recognized this when adopting a new Regional Action Programme last December, putting more emphasis on such concrete steps as innovative shipping technologies, cooperation on green shipping corridors and more efficient use of existing port infrastructure and facilities to make this ambition a reality.

Finally, aligning finance with our ocean, climate and broader SDG aspirations provides a crucial foundation for all of our action. Blue bonds are an attractive instrument both for governments interested in raising funds for ocean conservation and for investors interested in contributing to sustainable development in addition to obtaining a return for their investment.

These actions and others are steps towards ensuring the viability of several of the region’s key ocean-based economic sectors, such as seaborne trade, tourism and fisheries. An estimated 50 to 80 per cent of all life on Earth is found under the ocean surface. Seven of every 10 fish caught around the globe comes from Pacific waters. And we know that the oceans and coasts are also vital allies in the fight against climate change, with coastal systems such as mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows at the frontline of climate change, absorbing carbon at rates of up to 50 times those of the same area of tropical forest.

But the health of the oceans in Asia and the Pacific is in serious decline: rampant pollution, destructive and illegal fishing practices, inadequate marine governance and continued urbanization along coastlines have destroyed 40 per cent of the coral reefs and approximately 60 per cent of the coastal mangroves, while fish stocks continue to decline and consumption patterns remain unsustainable.

These and other pressures exacerbate climate-induced ocean acidification and warming and weaken the capacity of oceans to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Global climate change is also contributing to sea-level rise, which affects coastal and island communities severely, resulting in greater disaster risk , internal displacement and international migration.

To promote concerted action, ESCAP, in collaboration with partner UN agencies, provides a regional platform in support of SDG14, aligned within the framework of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). Through four editions so far of the Asia-Pacific Day for the Ocean, we also support countries in identifying and putting in place solutions and accelerated actions through regional dialogue and cooperation.

It is abundantly clear there can be no healthy planet without a healthy ocean. Our leaders meeting in Lisbon must step up efforts to protect the ocean and its precious resources and to build sustainable blue economies.

*******

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Solomon Islands’ environmental authorities have highlighted the need to protect the forests from logging following a recent report on new distributional sightings of the blue-faced parrotfinch, or Erythrura trichroa.

The bird revealed its existence on Malaita and Makira islands and the report, published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology on 4 August 2020, was based on fieldwork done between 2015 and 2018 by a team from the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico in the United States.

The report expands the known distribution of the species beyond Kolombangara and Guadalcanal, two of the Solomon Islands where it had previously been recorded, and signals the need to protect the country’s rainforests from the threats of commercial logging.

Jenna McCullough, one of the scientists involved in the study, said she hoped this information could contribute to an increased understanding of the evolutionary history and diversity of avian life on the Solomon Island archipelago.

Lead author Lucas DeCicco said he hoped the report would provide information that local communities could use to bolster efforts to conserve land for future generations.

“Many areas of the Solomon Islands are under threat from mining and forestry development, including areas on Malaita and Makira where we found blue-faced parrotfinches,” said DeCicco from the University of Kansas.

However, logging operations has been allowed by the very landowners who had allowed the scientists to study the bird on their land in Malaita Province.

When people do not see a large enough payout from conservation, they are willing to switch to something that is more economically lucrative, hence the support for mining, researchers say.

“Now they have switched to logging,” noted one of the report’s local co-authors, Dr Edgar Pollard.

There is currently a logging operation in Hahorarumu Uru conservation area on Malaita where the parrotfinch was sighted and studied in 2015 that puts its population at risk.

Providing validation
Dr Pollard said such scientific research verified and supported the need to protect these areas by showing there were still new species and important findings to be discovered.

It is very difficult to secure support for conservation work if there is no scientific evidence of the existence of biodiversity or different species, he said.

“So, we encourage our young people to engage in scientific studies, and a strength of this particular study was the collaboration of local and international scientists, which I believe is critical,” Dr Pollard added.

“Hopefully in the future we will be able to see more local scientists leading such studies.”

Dr Pollard founded the Mai-Maasina Green Belt (MMGB), which is focused on establishing the necessary infrastructure and supporting research and training activities to encourage rural communities to adopt a green approach to development.

“I want to also note that though these findings may be new to the world of science, they are not new to the local peoples that have stewardship over these species,” he said.

The vital role of birds
Birds are important for the environment as they are the key dispersers of seeds and pollinators for plants.

“Therefore, in a country with high deforestation we must look after our birds who play an important role in helping our forests recover,” said Dr Pollard.

Josef Hurutarau, deputy director of conservation at the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology (MECDM), said the report provided useful information given the need to understand the conservation status of the Solomon Islands’ flora and fauna.

“In conservation programs at the national level, it is our aim to know exactly the distribution and population of species, especially those that are endemic, threatened and near extinction in the Solomon Islands,” Hurutarau said.

Given limited resources and capacity within the government, Hurutarau said the ministry was working to improve its database of such endemic birds and set baselines to help direct its efforts and priorities.

In the case of Malaita and Makira, the MECDM now considers them among the country’s key biodiversity areas (KBAs), and Hurutarau said the ministry wanted to ensure effective conservation programmes were initiated.

The MECDM is also anticipating donor funding will become available to put toward a project for targeted areas, such as terrestrial-integrated forests, to be declared under the Protected Areas Act 2010.

“This would really help maintain key habitats and forest areas for these species and protect them from threats from logging and subsistence farming,” said Hurutarau.

“We will continue to encourage the efforts of researchers who can contribute to understanding our flora and fauna,” he added.

A need for new research
The first resident commissioner of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, C.M. Woodford, first found and collected the blue-faced parrotfinch on Guadalcanal Island in 1887. Then, in 1969, the species was found on other islands within the geographic Solomon Islands – first on Bougainville in 1969 and then on Kolombangara in 1974.

Despite this rich history of exploration focused on the archipelago’s birds, the authors of the recent report said knowledge of the avifauna native to the Solomon Islands was poor.

The scientists engaged in the study were from the University of Kansas, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, and the University of New Mexico. They partnered with Ecological Solutions Solomon Islands and local guides from Na’ara village on Makira and Waisisi on Malaita.

Biological surveys were conducted on Malaita in 2015 and Makira in 2018.

McCullough said the results of the study suggest there are limited genetic differences between the different parrotfinch populations across the Solomon Islands.

“Other studies have shown that there is genetic differentiation across island populations in many bird species, so this is notable for the lack of genetic differences.”

Much of the research McCullough’s larger lab group has been doing is to compare patterns of genetic similarity or differences of island birds across the Solomon Islands and greater Melanesia.

DeCicco said the report also presents the first information regarding the molecular relationships among the Solomon Island population of this species.

“Our discovery of two new populations of Blue-faced Parrotfinches highlights the need for continued biodiversity work in the region for both conservation and research,” DeCicco noted.

Priestley Habru is a Solomon Islands environmental journalist and contributor to Earth Journalism Network. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya paid a visit to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at the palace last October 31 bearing good news. A group of scientists had confirmed the finding of a new orangutan species called Tapanuli orangutan, she reported to the President.

Less than a year later, the global scientists who researched the endangered species sent two letters to the Presidential Palace. The first letter in July said there was a Chinese-funded hydropower project in the orangutan habitat that “could be the death knell for the Tapanuli orangutan, by flooding a key expanse of its habitat and, even more crucially, by slicing up its remaining forest home with new roads, power lines, tunnels and other built facilities”.

The scientists believe only 800 Tapanuli orangutans remain in their habitat, the Batang Toru ecosystem in South Tapanuli regency, North Sumatra.

The apes, with frizzier hair than their Bornean and Sumatran counterparts, have been threatened by poaching and illegal logging. The planned dam, they believe, will make the species’ chance of survival slimmer.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has included the species – Pongo tapanuliensis – on its red list, calling it “critically endangered”.

The second letter, dated August 16, reiterated the scientists’ request, saying that they had collected scientific evidence that had led them to believe the project “should not have been approved initially by the North Sumatra provincial government”.

‘Green’ dam
The company responsible for the project, PT North Sumatera Hydro Energy (NSHE), denied the scientists’ claims, saying that the hydropower plant, designed to produce 510 megawatts of electricity, was an “environmentally friendly” project, which would not flood much of the Batang Toru ecosystem.

The NSHE said the hydropower plant, which used “run-of-river technology” and had Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro as the contractor and operator, would only flood 67.7 ha of area in Batang Toru, which is not a protected forest but an area penggunaan lain (nonforest estate). The company also argued that it had completed all the necessary documents required by the North Sumatra administration.

The company, which is financially backed by a consortium of Chinese and international banks, said it had taken measures to protect the orangutans and that it was also interested in protecting the forest because its project depended on the abundance of water in the Batang Toru River.

“We will join any effort in the future that aims to better the orangutan habitat,” Agus Djoko Ismanto, a senior adviser to the NSHE, said recently. “We are not planning to inundate 9600 ha,” Agus said.

Poacher threat
The scientists, however, are not convinced.

One of them, Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at Australia’s James Cook University, said in-depth scientific analysis of the conservation status and threats to the Tapanuli orangutan had found that when new roads appeared, apes disappeared.

The NSHE confirmed that besides the 67.7 ha that will be flooded with water; about 600 ha will be used to build roads, tunnels and other infrastructure.

In the letter addressed to the President in July, 25 scientists from all over the world, including Jatna Supriatna from the University of Indonesia, said that instead of approving the dam project, the government should have had initiated forest restoration efforts in Batang Toru.

“Roads are a particularly insidious threat because they open the ape’s habitat to poachers, illegal loggers, miners and land encroachers. Recent scientific analysis shows that the Tapanuli orangutan survives only where roads are almost entirely absent,” the letter said.

1.3 million supporters
Environmentalists and others all over the world have voiced their support for the scientists. A global campaign to save the species began early this month and had gained more than 1.31 million supporters.

“As citizens from across the world, we urge you to save the last 800 Tapanuli orangutans from extinction by canceling the Batang Toru hydropower dam project. The fate of this entire species rests in your hands, “the petition on avaaz.org said.

Protests from national environmentalists have also escalated into a lawsuit. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the regional administration’s decision to issue permits for the power plant.

One of the organisation’s lawyers, Golfrid Siregar, said the permit issuance was problematic on account of the lack of discussion and participation from locals.

Separately, the director of Walhi’s North Sumatra office, Dana Prima Tarigan, said the power plant could also cause an ecological disaster, as it would be located near an earthquake-prone area in the province.

In response to the growing calls, the Environment and Forestry Ministry had held a coordination meeting with the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and the company to discuss possible solutions.

Task force
“After the meeting, we established a joint team comprising personnel from both ministries, the company, regional administration and the Indonesian Orangutan Forum [Forina], which is task with looking for alternatives to be applied in the area,” the ministry’s natural resources and ecosystems director-general Wiratno said last week.

One of the solutions offered by the company, he added, was to build an “orangutan corridor” that would help the animal migrate between the two forest areas in Batang Toru.

Should the concept be applied in the area, it will become the first corridor to be implemented in Indonesia.

“It, however, was still an idea. The team will need to go into the area first before offering possible solutions. We are still waiting for data from the field,” Wiratno said.

Kharishar Kahfi contributed to this story for The Jakarta Post from the capital of Jakarta.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Scientists in Samoa have issued a dire warning about the fate of the national bird, which features on the country’s bank notes and coins.

Acccording to ABC News the manumea has been on the brink of extinction for several years.

Conservationist Gianluca Serra is leading a team employed by the Samoan government to stop the bird from disappearing.

He told Mandie Sami of ABC News the situation was desperate.

“There are probably only a few dozens birds left in Samoa,” he said.

Serra said the manumea is a species of pigeon and is special because it is only found in Samoa and is the last surviving relative of the extinct dodo bird.

He said hunting was a major issue.

“We realize that they are being hunted by mistake because apparently people don’t like the manumea’s meat but they kill the manumea while they are targeting another pigeon they like.”

Serra added forest logging and invasive species like rats and cats also put the survival of the bird in danger.

‘Pretty depressing’

“You know our job as conservationists is pretty depressing,” he said. “Every year the planet is losing hundreds if not thousands of species.

“There is not enough awareness and interest by governments and people.

“Public opinion is so interested about cats and dogs but they don’t know that there is wildlife out there and they need help, so it’s really hard.  There’s no money there, only few people are interested in it.”

Serra and his team are working with local villages to establish protected areas and controls around hunting.

Listen to the full interview on ABC News.