Jakarta, 29 July 2010 - PT SMART Tbk ("SMART") reaffirms that it does not clear primary forests

and peat lands, nor does it clear orang-utan habitats, as claimed by Greenpeace in its report today

titled "How Sinar Mas is expanding its empires of destruction". All concession areas owned or

managed by SMART and its parent company, Golden Agri-Resources Ltd ("GAR"), are located on

degraded land, based on government concessions and in accordance to national laws and

regulations.

http://www.goldenagri.com.sg/

31/07/2010
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Posted by jamie <http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/user/jamie>
 on 29 July 2010.

The short answer: not likely.

In fact, not only will they not be likely to come 'clean', but today
we are releasing fresh evidence
<http://www.greenpeace.org/international/sinar-mas-empires-of-destruction>
 that Sinar Mas's notorious forest-destroying practices continue
unabated and in direct violation of the company's own environmental
commitments on protecting forests and peatlands.

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/forests/will-notorious-forest-destroyer-sinar-mas-come-clean-20100729

29/07/2010
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Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
July 29, 2010

With 18,000 islands spanning two major bigeographic realms (and a curious outlier in Sulawesi) across an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers, Indonesia is one of the world's most biodiverse countries. It has the world's third largest extent of tropical forests, has the planet's richest coral reefs, and is home to more than 12 percent of plant and animal species. Indonesia is culturally rich as well. Its hundreds of cultures speak more than 500 languages.

But Indonesia's biological and cultural bounties are diminished going into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Its forests and have damaged and degraded by logging and plantation development, eaten away by subsistence and industrial agriculture, mined for minerals and ore, and burned by armies of farmers and developers. At the same time, its rich waters have in some areas been overfished and fouled by pollution, its reefs mined for limestone and sea life, and its mangroves filled and cleared. Economic growth has accelerated the onslaught and exacerbated conflict over increasingly valuable land.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0729-interview_meijaard.html

29/07/2010
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Last month we notified Primate Patrol members that Lifetime Television had recently filmed an episode of Drop Dead Diva that exploited a chimpanzee named Suzy. We urged our supporters to write letters to Lifetime asking them to not air the segment of the show with Suzy.

Despite the large amount of feedback that Primate Patrol members sent to Lifetime, the show featuring Suzy aired last night (July 25, 2010). Please send a polite letter to Lifetime and express your disappointment that they aired the chimpanzee segment in last night's episode.

26/07/2010
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Sanur, Bali. The survival prospects of the silvery gibbon, also known as the Javan gibbon, are looking a lot rosier now following revelations that there are more than 1,000 of the primates in previously overlooked forests in Central Java. 

A previously unrecorded population of 896 gibbons was discovered near Mount Slamet in Central Java, while 176 were found at the nearby Dieng Plateau, Arif Setiawan, a wildlife researcher at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, told the International Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, currently under way in Sanur, Bali. 

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/hope-for-javas-silvery-gibbon-after-lost-communities-found/387292

23/07/2010
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JOHANNESBURG, 22 July 2010 (IRIN) - People and wildlife have never been in greater competition for limited resources as human populations invade shrinking natural habitats in a fight for living space, food and water. In this vignette of a planet-wide battle, IRIN looks at how to keep elephants away from your crops and raiding monkeys out of your food stores.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89916

22/07/2010
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