Tag Archives: Sumatra

My name is Adelbert Gangai. I am from the Maisin tribe and work with the nine tribes from the Collingwood Bay region of Papua New Guinea. Our culture is intrinsically entwined and our livelihoods are entirely dependent on the primary forest that surrounds us.
But recently there is a threat that the palm oil company KLK will destroy the subsistence life style we have maintained since time immemorial by attempting to illegally develop over 100,000 acres of our customary lands against our will. Fortunately, KLK has a weak spot—HSBC Bank is one of KLK’s principal bankers. Will you take a moment to tell HSBC to use its influence to pressure KLK to stop expanding on our lands?
Our chiefs issued a rare joint communiqué in 2010 voicing the consensus of the residents of Collingwood Bay—who total over 7,000 people from 326 clans in 22 villages scattered across our coastline—that we do not wish to have industrial palm oil plantations established on our land under any circumstances.
Will you stand with us and send a message today to HSBC—a key banker of KLK—asking it to use its influence to urge KLK to stop these misguided plans before this controversy escalates into a full blown conflict?
RAN sponsored a colleague from Collingwood Bay and myself this past month to bring our case to the annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Sumatra. Thanks in large part to the pressure generated by over 12,000 RAN supporters like you, who took action to demand that KLK meet with us and that the RSPO finally take steps to address the formal complaint we filed more than a half a year ago, progress was made on both fronts.
Thank you for making this an issue that KLK and the RSPO can no longer ignore. But no real commitments have yet been made and right now, large earth moving equipment and a KLK barge containing palm oil seeds still sits just off our coastline. The anxiety this has created has driven members of our community to establish a blockade between the ship and the access route to our land.
We would now like to ask our friends and partners in the international community to take up our call and increase the pressure on KLK by asking one of its key bankers, HSBC, to use its leverage with KLK to push for a total withdrawal from our territory. For good.
We have witnessed what has happened to other communities in Papua New Guinea and around the world whose lands have been over-run by industrial palm oil plantations. They have been marginalized and become slaves on their own land. We do not wish this for the people of Collingwood Bay.
Our communities have fought and won against multinational corporations trying to develop our lands before. With your help, we will prevail in preserving this special place once again.
Thank you so much for your support,
Adelbert Gangai

		Thank you,
		Adelbert Gangai Collingwood Bay

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Help save the last remaining wild orangutans

10/18/2013 Nativegrl77

Make a $5 gift today and it will automatically be doubled!

To get cheap palm oil, top snack food brands are doing business with companies that are driving the last 60,600 wild orangutans to extinction, committing human rights violations and destroying rainforests.
Put simply, if these companies don’t change the way they’re doing business, orangutans are predicted to be extinct within our lifetime.
That’s why RAN has launched what may be our most ambitious campaign to date—and why two RAN supporters have offered to match every gift dollar-for-dollar up to $50,000 to make sure we have the resources to take the fight to the doorsteps of the top 20 snack food companies using “Conflict Palm Oil” in their products.
Give $5 today and your gift will automatically be doubled, meaning it will have twice the impact to save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the 60,600 wild orangutans who call them home.
In Indonesia alone, the area covered by palm oil plantations has grown by 600 percent since 1990 to cover twenty million acres (that’s the size of Maine). This really is a critical moment for the world’s last remaining wild orangutans and the forests they call home, and we urgently need everyone who can to chip in to help us meet this match.
We’re only one month into our new campaign, The Last Stand of the Orangutan, and your emails and calls demanding the Snack Food 20 stop using Conflict Palm Oil are already having a huge impact. Some of these companies have started taking steps to address their palm oil problem, but they won’t commit to real, substantial change unless we can amplify our message.
Your support today will help build a powerful grassroots movement to send the loudest and clearest message we can that we expect these companies to eliminate rainforest destruction from their supply chains now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.
Every dollar you give today will double your impact to help save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the orangutans that depend on them.
We are up against powerful and well-funded opponents, and we know our work is cut out for us. But, by standing together and taking the fight directly to the Snack Food 20, we can make a real difference in our fight to save these endangered rainforests.
So please don’t let this opportunity slip by—make your gift of $5 today to double your impact.
Thanks for all you do. You are making an incredible difference.

		For the great red ape,
		Lindsey Allen Executive Director Rainforest Action Network

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Fed up with Cargill, taking our demands to its customers

09/10/2013 Nativegrl77

Rainforest Action Network

It has begun!

I’m here in Minnesota today to kick off The Power Is In Your Palm Tour, a traveling roadshow that will visit a dozen of the Snack Food 20—companies using conflict palm oil in their popular snack food products—at their US headquarters. I’ll be working with the dedicated activists on the Palm Oil Action Team to deliver our demands to each of these companies: Take conflict palm oil tied to rainforest destruction, orangutan extinction, and human rights violations out of your snack foods!

Fittingly, we started the tour at the world headquarters of Cargill, the #1 importer of conflict palm oil into the US. We just hand-delivered over 100,000 petitions calling on Cargill to commit to transparency and safeguards that will eliminate the conflict palm oil that is driving orangutans to the brink of extinction from its global supply chain.

Cargill petition delivery

After years of making similar demands, though, we’re tired of waiting. Cargill has had its chance to do the right thing. After today, we’re taking our demands directly to Cargill’s customers—many of whom are amongst the Snack Food 20.
The Power Is In Your Palm Tour will travel across the US to deliver the message far and wide that you and me can change how these companies do business. When we take action, the Snack Food 20 will have to remove conflict palm oil from their products. And to do that, the Snack Food 20 will have to tell Cargill that it’s time to remove conflict palm oil from its supply chain.
Here’s how you can help:
1. Sign up for the Palm Oil Action Team—you’ll get all the latest calls to action and will make a huge contribution to The Power Is In Your Palm Tour. Together, we’ll pressure the Snack Food 20 to change their ways.
2. Chip in $5 to keep the tour rolling! We can’t do any of this without your support. Just $5 will go a long way.
It’s so important that you get involved now because we have truly reached The Last Stand of the Orangutan. Best estimates place the population of orangutans in the wilds of Sumatra and Borneo at just 60,600. We really have no time to waste in convincing the Snack Food 20 and Cargill to make sure the products they sell aren’t destroying precious habitat for these great red apes.
Thanks for all you do! And stay tuned, because the next event of The Power Is In Your Palm Tour is going down this Thursday, and we’ll finally be naming the Snack Food 20 and publicly calling on them to clean up their act. You’ll have a big role to play in making that call as loud and clear as possible!

		For the great red ape,
		Jess Serrante National Agribusiness Organizer Twitter: @Jess_Serrante

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Next steps to save Tripa forest …Lindsey Allen, Rainforest Action Network

04/13/2012 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

Give a wake up call to Cargill

As you know, Tripa rainforest is in a state of emergency.
The Tripa forest of Sumatra, home to Indigenous communities and critical to the survival of endangered Sumatran orangutans, is still in peril from the landclearing fires started by palm oil companies in March.
U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill—trader of 25% of the world’s palm oil—can make a difference by adopting the safeguards necessary to guarantee that rainforests, communities and critical habitat for endangered species are not destroyed through its palm oil business.
Cargill clearly needs a wakeup call. Can you commit five minutes of your time to give it to them?
Applying the kind of pressure required for Cargill to take a stand for the local people of Tripa, the survival of Sumatran orangutans, and the 130 million year old rainforests that they call home is no small task, but it’s a worthy one.
Are you ready to do what it takes to transform the destructive behavior of a corporate giant? Cargill needs to hear from you, and hundreds of other rainforest advocates like you, to be moved to action at this critical moment.
Let’s give this sleeping giant a wake up call today to save Tripa!

		For the forests,
		Lindsey Allen Forest Program Director Twitter: @probwithpalmoil #savetripa

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Near Extinction: Only 400 Sumatran Tigers Left

06/14/2011 Nativegrl77

Only 400 Sumatran tigers are left in the world.

Javan Tiger (~1930’s)
Bali Tiger (~1970’s)
Sumatran Tiger (?)

In Indonesia, only the Sumatran tiger remains – and there are just 400 parents and cubs left.

Fewer tigers than sheets in a ream of paper. There are no tigers to spare Carmen. And there’s no time to spare if we want to save them.

In 1930, there were three subspecies of unique, majestic tigers found in Indonesia. Today, two of them are extinct – and the last one is in real trouble.

They need our help now. Please make an urgent donation to help save them.

www.greenpeaceusa.org

The Sumatran tiger is classified as “critically endangered” – on the brink of extinction and barely hanging on.

They’ve lost 93% of their habitat because companies like Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) are destroying their forest homes. Tigers are left to roam barren tracks where they are easily slaughtered by poachers for their body parts or shot by the people moving in.

To fight back, we need your help to expose the massacre, pressure corporations to cut ties with APP and fight on the ground to save these last remaining Sumatran tigers.

We can’t wait another day – not when we’re dealing with a population of only 400 tigers. If we don’t act now, every one of these beautiful animals will soon be dead.

Since Greenpeace takes absolutely no money from corporations or governments, we depend entirely on you to power our independent and hard-hitting campaigns. Will you help save these 400 Sumatran tigers?

Please help us raise $50,000 in the next 9 days to make it possible. We need just 100 gifts from supporters in WA to reach our goal.

http://us.greenpeace.org/site/R?i=EaKi7m_j37L57NsL_LaZpQ..

Without you, the tigers don’t stand a chance. Without your action, APP will continue lining its pockets with profits, poachers will continue shooting these tigers and reselling their body parts in places like China, and these last Sumatran tigers will just be collateral damage.

But together, we can stop them.

With the financial help of supporters like you, we’ve already put the squeeze on APP, convincing major companies like Nestle, Kraft and Unilever to stop buying products linked to rainforest destruction. Now APP is running for cover, claiming that they’re actually conservationists in a series of new, bogus ads.

We’re ready to put the nail in APP’s profit coffin by running ads across the country to expose the companies that do business with them, flooding them with calls and letters, and continuing to fight on the ground to protect Sumatran tiger families – but we need your support to make all of this happen.

Please give these last Sumatran tiger families a future – before it’s too late.

Together we’ve rallied to overcome seemingly insurmountable problems and won victories to protect the planet – and I know we can do it again to save the Sumatran tiger.

Together we are powerful, together we make a difference.

Rolf Skar
Greenpeace Senior Forest Campaigner

P.S. We need just 100 supporters like you to donate from WA to meet our goal. Please donate right now via our secure website or by calling 1-800-722-6995.