News - The Problems Orangutans face

25 December 2011
Solaris Paper Pty Ltd, which supplies the Australian market with private label tissue products, is an Australian operated and managed affiliate of Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP), a brand umbrella for paper products manufactured by a number of mills in Indonesia. Things got nasty recently when its tussle with Greenpeace over sourcing of rainforest timber became public.

Sunday 25th April 2010
Dateline Current Affairs program on SBS TV ran a piece on the orang-utans in Borneo and the threat from palm oil plantations.

27 January 2011
Palm oil, usually produced from a species of palm tree originally from West Africa, has emerged over the past 30 years as one of the world’s most widely used—and controversial—crops. Palm oil goes into a range of products available in virtually every supermarket, pharmacy, and department store.

16 October 2008
The majestic forests are vanishing in smoke and sawdust, but there's still hope for the island's fabled biodiversity

March 2016
Zoos Victoria have produced a guide to help make your Easter buying easy and orangutan friendly.

5 November 2015
The fires have driven the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere to levels not seen in two million years, experts say

12 October 2015

A new palm oil plantation in Borneo, Malaysia, is being used by researchers to study ways of retaining endangered wildlife, including the orangutan.

12 December 2014
The world's largest orangutan rescue organization, Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) reported the horrific killing of a female orangutan this month. She was found in a palm oil plantation that belonged to a subsidiary of the Makin Group of Indonesia.

12 November 2014
How do the products we buy affect the world’s rainforests? In the lead up to the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit held in Sydney this week, The Conversation is running a series on rainforest commodities.

20 September 2014
Five of the world's largest palm oil producers have announced an immediate moratorium on palm oil sourced via clearance of potential high carbon stock forests.

6 June 2014
Momentum to stop deforestation is coming from palm oil producers and brands, but unless the RSPO strengthens its standards, Indonesia's forests will continue to burn

4 April 2014
Zoos Victoria Zoos Victoria has compiled a guide to help you buy orang-utan friendly this Easter.

22nd November 2013
Announcing the Palm Oil Action Group's New Campaign: Spend a little and lose a lot at Aldi?

21 September 2013
Melbourne Zoo's orangutan Kiani has been recruited to assist in the Zoo's ongoing Don't Palm Us Off campaign. Hear what she has to say:

5 September 2013
Greenpeace's recent report into deforestation in Indonesia paints a concerning picture. Over the last few years every daylight hour bulldozers destroyed the equivalent of 200 football fields of forest in Indonesia, with palm oil plantations the biggest driver.

3 September 2013
"Nothing would do more to rapidly decrease the risk of climate change than a major plan to protect global rainforests" - Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt, media release, 30 August.

18 April 2013
Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA), a palm oil company, have completely destroyed the rainforest for miles around in this area of Borneo, Indonesia. Sitting on top of what is left of the last tree, an orangutan looks helplessly on.

3 April 2013
The much-touted new deforestation policy of controversial paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) will save almost no forests in its main base of operations, Sumatra, Indonesia, a new report by NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest has concluded.

26 March 2013
Palm oil is the most widely produced edible oil in the world, but its use is increasingly coming under fire from environmental activists and concerned consumers.

28th February 2013
Since 2009, companies have announced new oil palm plantation projects in the Congo Basin covering a total area of 1.6 million hectares. Projects currently underway cover 500,000 hectares. A new report by Rainforest Foundation UK warns that vast areas of the Congo Basin forests are potentially threatened by the expansion of oil palm plantations.

18 January 2013
BOS Australia President, Tony Gilding said "An important new paper was released just before Christmas. It was co-authored by no less than five staff members of Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation as well as other eminent scientists." 

15 January 2013
Concerned about the fast degradation of the environment in East Kalimantan due to the high number of plantation concessions issued, the provincial administration plans to issue a moratorium on new palm oil plantations starting this year, an official said on Monday.

15 January 2013
Nearly a third of all orangutans left in the wild can be found within logging concessions in Indonesia, according to a new study by the Center for International Forest Research, which says designation of these areas for conservation could help save the endangered apes from extinction - while at the same time protecting forests.

12 November 2012
According to new research led by an LJMU conservation scientist, one of our closest cousins, the Bornean orang-utan, is facing extinction.

2 November 2012
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has often been met with resistance, suspicion and lack of government support in Indonesia since its establishment in 2001.

30 October 2012
By the end of 2015 all palm oil used in central UK Government food and catering services will come from environmentally friendly sources, Environment Minister Richard Benyon announced today.

7 October 2012
Expanding production of palm oil, a common ingredient in processed foods, soaps and personal care products, is driving rainforest destruction and massive carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new study led by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities.

19th August 2012
They're better known as stealthy killing machines to take out suspected terrorists with pinpoint accuracy.

25 July 2012
A campaign run by environmental activists has helped lead to a 87 percent reduction in palm oil use by eight major food companies in Norway, reports Rainforest Foundation Norway, which led the effort.

23 July 2012
Indonesia and Malaysia lost more than 11 million hectares (42,470 square miles) of forest between 2000 and 2010, according to a study published last year in the journal Global Change Biology.

16 July 2012
Orangutans are in dire need of a revised conservation approach, according to a new study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

10 July, 2012
Still no news from KFC headquarters in the US despite the fact it’s been six weeks since Greenpeace International exposed the company’s links to rainforest deforestation.

17th June 2012
Indonesia "has reversed course" from a forest policy that drove deforestation in previous decades and is poised to become a leader in "sustainable forestry", asserted Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a speech on Wednesday at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor.

20th June 2012
The Indian market is the world's largest consumer of palm oil, most of it from Indonesia. Palm oil imports into India have grown rapidly since 2007 to 7.2 million tonnes in 2011-12, resulting in a steep import bill and spurring the destruction of Indonesian forest for plantations.

10 June 2012
As the public servants of Indonesia's Forestry Ministry stand waiting for the lifts, they are assailed by warnings against graft.