6 December 2009
It’s the hottest acronym going in the world of climate change. The UN-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is being touted as both the savior of rain forests and a new natural resource commodity that will bring untold riches to the developing world.
7 December 2009
Driving through Indonesia's central Sumatra, it appears that all life on earth has been obliterated, like a scene from some apocalyptic movie.
7 December 2009
LifeMosaic brings two films on different aspects of REDD in Indonesia.
3 December 2009
There are two important things to know about tracking wild elephants, and it's better to learn both of them before you're actually in the jungle, tracking wild elephants.
1 December 2009
Environmental nongovernmental organizations released a report on Monday accusing Australia of using a bilateral forestry project in Kalimantan to avoid reducing emissions at home while ignoring the welfare of indigenous peoples here.
27 November 2009
A report on how palm oil is destroying virgin rainforest and threatening the survival of the endangered orang utans, among others, in Malaysia and Indonesia was awarded the 'Environment Story of the Year' by Foreign Press Association's Media Awards.
20 November 2009
PERTH Zoo's newest addition to the orangutan enclosure made her public debut today as the face of a campaign to help save her species.
13 November 2009
Members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an initiative developing criteria to improve the environmental performance of palm oil, agreed to declare the Bukit Tigapuluh Ecosystem in Sumatra a 'high conservation value area'.
13 November 2009
At least another 50 North Sumatra orangutans are being prepared for release into their natural habitat in Indonesia to speed up the multiplication of the big apes, 97 percent of whose DNA are human.
12 November 2009
40% of lowland forests in Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo cleared in 15 years
7 November 2009
R.S.P.O. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil upset some conservationists when it concluded its annual meeting this week without including greenhouse gas emissions standards in its certification process.
28 October 2009
Insiders say international initiative to set environmental standards for palm oil production is 'on brink of collapse'
28 October 2009
Global food giant Nestle has announced its commitment to using only Certified Sustainable Palm Oil by 2015, the year when it said sufficient quantities were expected to be available.
28 October 2009
Almost 1000 hectares of degraded land in the area designated Heart of Borneo is to be restored as orangutan habitat, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between WWF-Malaysia and the State of Sabah yesterday.
26 October 2009
Indonesia is destroying its forests faster than any other country, according to the Guinness Book of Records, with an average two million hectares disappearing every year, double the annual loss in the 1980s.
26 October 2009
A vital safeguard to protect the world's rainforests from being cut down has been dropped from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December.
21 October 2009
During what was at times an emotional speech, Sabah's Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Environment, Datuk Masidi Manjun, called on the palm oil industry to stop polluting rivers and work with NGOs to save orangutans and other wildlife.
11 October 2009
WEAVING its way through the jungle, nibbling on fruits and tree bark, an orang utan suddenly finds itself in unfamiliar territory.
7 October 2009
An "environmentally friendly" tropical crop could lead to hazardous increases in levels of the air pollutant ozone according to new research published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
30 September 2009
Fleur Butcher from Melbourne Zoo visited Nyaru Menteng earlier in the year and caught up with her orangutan friend Melvin. The trip was the next stage in the skills exchange program with Melbourne Zoo and was funded by BOS Australia.
29 September 2009
Australians' saturated fat consumption remains unacceptably high because of food manufacturers' reliance on cheap imported palm oil.
24 September 2009
In Southeast Asia, the world's smallest bear species faces poaching, deforestation and a host of other woes, according to Siew Te Wong, a graduate in wildlife biology from the University of Montana.
23 September 2009
For decades, the roar of the chainsaw has meant one thing in Indonesia's national parks: illegal loggers ripping down the rainforest.
23 September 2009
About five percent, or two million tonnes of the expected crop of 40 million tonnes of Crude Palm Oil produced in 2009 is expected to be certified as sustainable this year, environmental standards watchdog, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) estimates.
20 September 2009
In Central Kalimantan, the hunters and poachers have the blood of orang utan on their hands. The forests that are home to these animals are also being cleared at an alarming rate in the name of development. A rehabilitation centre offers some measure of hope, writes Amy Chew.
9 September 2009
Idyllic scenes of palm trees swaying in the breeze over sandy beaches have long decorated brochures designed to lure tourists to Indonesia and Malaysia. But few visitors see the giant palm plantations away from the shore.
2 September 2009
Indonesia says it could cut its carbon emissions by more than 40 per cent by 2030, by reducing deforestation, peatland degradation and power use.
2 September 2009
Australia's food regulatory body has rejected a call for food manufacturers to name the source of vegetable oil in their products.
25 August 2009
THE federal Forestry Minister, Tony Burke, has approved changes to an election promise to ban imports of illegally logged timber to instead ''promote the trade'' of legal timber.
17 August 2009
Consumers secured an important victory today with Cadbury reversing its previous decision to put palm oil in its dairy milk chocolate. This will include all dairy milk chocolate made in Australia and New Zealand.
10 August 2009
AS SUMA, one of Melbourne Zoo's oldest orang-utans, fixes her trusting eyes on a playful toddler from the sanctuary of her enclosure, thousands of kilometres away her relatives in Sumatra and Borneo watch with fear the activities of the humans who come their way.
2 August 2009
A hundred or so orangutans have just returned from a day at "forest school," where they learn to find food, use tools and fear snakes.
24 July 2009
Asia Pulp & Paper’s proposal to convert the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem into pulp paper production in Sumatra - destroying critical Sumatran orang-utan, tiger and elephant habitat – continues to receive media attention.
23 July 2009
An article in New Scientist (22 July, 2009: Issue 2718) reports that October this year will see an unprecedented meeting of Malaysia's palm oil producers, conservationists and local government to figure out how to protect the world's last orangutans.
15 July 2009
European consumer groups and nongovernmental organizations have said they want environmentally friendly palm oil. Malaysian producers of palm oil that have made the switch are discovering that it is still a hard sell.
12 July 2009
A consumer backlash is mounting over Cadbury's decision to add palm oil to its chocolate, with Auckland Zoo pulling the confectionary giant's products from its shops and restaurant because of concern over the damage palm oil production does to rainforests.