Report: Orangutans Killed for Meat in Kalimantan

A conservation report states that 691 endangered orangutans were killed in Borneo during a recent 17-month period – many for meat, and some at the behest of palm oil companies – with any babies captured alive sold into the pet trade.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) coordinated the report, which was supported by GRASP partners such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), among others, and involved a survey of 698 villages across Kalimantan.

TNC program manager Neil Makinuddin said 70 percent of the respondents knew that orangutans were a protected and endangered species when they hunted the animals.

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Is Bushmeat Sustainable? U.N. Study Says ‘Possible’

Montreal – A United Nations report says sustainable bushmeat harvesting is possible, but only if governments combine new mechanisms for monitoring and law enforcement with new management models, such as community-based management or game-ranching. Finding alternate means of livelihood for residents of forests and other wild lands also will help conserve vanishing species.

If not, the rapid depletion of birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals – including great apes in both Africa and Asia – will continue to gain pace as a result of the illegal trade in the meat and other parts of wildlife.

The report, "Livelihood Alternatives for the Unsustainable Use of Bushmeat," was prepared for the Bushmeat Liaison Group of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), with assistance from the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC and financial support from the European Union.

Download Report [PDF, 1mb]

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UNEP Study Confirms DR Congo Biodiversity Under Threat

Kinshasa – A major Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment of the Democratic Republic of Congo by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) confirms the country’s wealth of natural resources, but warns that 190 species – including critically endangered Mountain gorillas – are in peril, that the illegal bushmeat trade has devastated biodiversity, and that tropical rainforests are an untapped source of ecosystem revenue worth $900 million annually.

DR Congo possesses half of Africa’s forests and water resources and trillion dollar mineral reserves, and could become a powerhouse of African development provided multiple pressures on its natural resources are urgently addressed.

But the study, Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment of the Democratic Republic of Congo: Synthesis Report for Policy Makers,  warns of alarming trends including increased deforestation, species depletion, heavy metal pollution and land degradation from mining, as well as an acute drinking water crisis that has left an estimated 51 million Congolese without access to potable water.

Download the report: [English] [French] (PDF, 5mb)

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