Malaysia Unhappy With Overseas Doomsdaying Involving Orangutans

Accusing international activists of painting an unnecessarily bleak picture of Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), the Malaysian government said it deplores such seeming propaganda that undermines the national oil palm industry. Notorious for converting miscellaneous natural vegetation into monoculture matrices, palm oil plantations in southeast asia have ballooned in both number and scale as a result of the recent surge in biofuels. Palm oil mixed with diesel or ethanol has been touted as the optimal biofuel alternative to convential fuel, hence providing a solution to an impending energy crisis. However, the many environmental no-no's of oil palm have spurred a heated debate among environmentalists and policy-makers alike. Oil palm plantations have replaced illegal logging and forest fires as the leading cause of depleting virgin rainforests in southeast Asia and as it turns out, its the probably the first environmental solution swiftly on its way towards becoming a major environmental problem!


Going back to Orang Utans, the Malay government stresses that the oil palm cultivation is taking place sustainably, using land that has already been cleared, traditionally for rubber. The UN report, "The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: A State of Emergency" begs to differ, claiming that with the present rates of land conversion in Indonesia and Malaysia, not even a trace of virgin forests will remain by 2022. In as soon as 5 years, Orang Utan sightings may be limited to glass cases of stuffed models in the Smithsonian...due to the natural populations having been driven to extinction.