Indonesian Rainforests Increasingly Devoid Of Wildlife - Poaching Pressure Even In Heart Of Borneo

[hatrack]

EDIT

Camera trapping programs deep in the forested interior of Kalimantan, at least 100 kilometers from the nearest town, show that people travel to areas as remote as this to collect valuable species. They are primarily looking for expensive forest products such as gaharu or aloeswood, but will collect any other useful wildlife they can find, such as anteaters, hornbills valued for the use of their beaks in medicine, or song birds.

A kilo of good gaharu is worth 400 million rupiah ($35,000), an anteater (or “pangolin”) will earn a hunter one or two million rupiah more, and a straw-headed bulbul, a very popular cage bird now virtually extinct in the wild, can be sold for a few million rupiah too. Obviously these collecting and hunting trips are very much worth it. All through Indonesia people are going ever deeper into forests collecting whatever has monetary or nutritional value.

There is an enormous demand in Southeast Asia for wildlife, either dead or alive. Geckos, hornbills, pangolins, pythons, cockatoos, and a huge variety of song birds are among the many species traded in vast quantities within the region. The latest craze is flying squirrels, cute, furry little animals that are sold in the thousands to be kept as pets. With the largest forests in the region remaining in Indonesia, and wildlife populations on the Asian mainland already very much depleted, Indonesia is becoming the main supplier of wildlife in the region.

To prevent the empty forest syndrome in Indonesia something needs to be done urgently. Good protected area management is a start, but effectively guarding all areas of remote forests and seas is virtually impossible. The least the government should consider is to publicly acknowledge what natural treasure Indonesia stands to lose if it doesn’t find more sustainable ways to manage species harvests. Updating and publicizing the list of protected species, which largely dates back to Dutch colonial times, would help, as well as expanding the illegality of activities that are harmful to threatened species.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0525-meijaard-wildlife-trade-indonesia.html

[ladjf]

1. The human race has infested Borneo and most of the rest of Earth.

For the most part, we are a disgrace among the Earths animals.

[Nihil]

2. Any future analysis will be kinder than we deserve ...

From the correlation between human growth/spreading and species extinction,
it will be assumed that we either ate them out of existence or unknowingly spread
a disease to which they had no immunity.

It is pretty damn unlikely that any future scientists would consider that the most
advanced species of the world was exterminating random animal families
due to pathetic superstitions that it would make their penis big & hard.

[ladjf]

3. In general, you've just about said it all.

I keep scanning the news looking for any material or social trends that are moving in the right direction but don't find any.

It seems that our greatest failure centers around our inability to use long term objective thinking rather than short term subjective processes.