Indonesia forests being ‘destroyed’

In a report on Tuesday, Greenpeace said it had confidential documents from a Sinar Mas subsidiary, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), suggesting that the company did not intend to fulfil a promise to source its wood from plantations alone after 2009.

“From analysis of Indonesian government and confidential Sinar Mas maps and data, as well as on-the-ground investigations … APP continues to acquire and destroy rainforest and peatland to feed its two pulp mills in Sumatra,” the environmental group said in the report, referring to the once forest-clad western Indonesian island.

Read more at Al Jazeera English.

Indonesia’s last glacier will melt within years

First of all, we didn’t know there were glaciers in Indonesia (albeit in the Papuan Highlands), of all places. Now we hear of them dying.

Lonnie Thompson spent years preparing for his expedition to the remote, mist-shrouded mountains of eastern Indonesia, hoping to chronicle the affect of global warming on the last remaining glacier in the Pacific. Hes worried he got there too late.Even as he pitched his tent on top of Puncak Jaya, the ice was melting beneath him.The 3-mile- 4,884-meter- high glacier was pounded by rain every afternoon during the teams 13-day trip, something the American scientist has never encountered in three decades of drilling ice cores. He lay awake at night listening to the water gushing beneath him.By the time they were ready to head home, ice around their sheltered campsite had melted a staggering 12 inches 30 centimeters.”These glaciers are dying,” said Thompson, one of the worlds most accomplished glaciologists. “Before I was thinking they had a few decades, but now Id say were looking at years.”

Read more at independentmail.com: AP News.

(Thanks @izreloaded)

Officials scramble to save endangered Javan rhinos

The discovery of three dead Javan rhinos has intensified efforts to save one of the world’s most endangered mammals from extinction, with an electric fence being built Monday around a new sanctuary and breeding ground.

With only about 50 of the species left in the wild — all but a handful living in one national park in western Indonesia — conservationists are even talking about taking the rare step of relocating some of the 5-ton animals to spread out the population and give the Javan rhino a better chance to survive.

Drought and proximity to an active volcano in the densely forested Ujung Kulon park have raised fears that a natural disaster could destroy almost the entire population at once. In Vietnam, the only other place the rhinos can be found, there are just four.

Read more at guardian.co.uk.

New study links drilling to Indonesia mud volcano

JAKARTA, Feb 12 (Reuters) – A team of scientists said in a report on Friday that they had found the strongest evidence yet linking a devastating mud volcano in Indonesia to drilling at a gas exploration well by local energy firm PT Lapindo Brantas.

Read more at Reuters

Indonesia self-destructs (and we’re next door)

Why doesn’t anyone in government do anything about this other than to say it is difficult to police this vast country?

From CNN:

Sumatra, Indonesia (CNN) — The land still smolders, tinted with a depressing gray. Twisted hulks of tree trunks take on abnormal shapes. A dark black canal cuts through the wasted landscape.
It looks like a scene from an apocalyptic movie where an unknown force has obliterated all life. But this is the reality of Sumatra, Indonesia’s largest island…