Just outside Indonesia’s planned new capital on Borneo, an orangutan catches a banana with one hand, thrown by a conservationist on a boat, while her other hand clings to a tree branch.
She is one of 127 orangutans that the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) is caring for in the Samboja District of East Kalimantan Province. They have lost their homes due to deforestation, often linked to coal mining, and palm oil and timber plantations.
The giant apes could face an even bigger threat as Southeast Asia’s largest country builds from scratch Nusantara — a US$32 billion city.
Photo: Reuters
The government has promised to protect wildlife and undertake major reforestation in parts of the capital, which has been marketed to investors as a smart and green city.
Environmentalists are wary that construction in an area spanning nearly 260,000 hectares — almost four times the size of Singapore — would disturb some of Borneo’s endemic fauna, including endangered long-nosed monkeys, Irrawaddy dolphins and orangutans.
“Our biggest concern is Balikpapan Bay will turn into a giant pond, a place for residual waste from Nusantara’s activities,” said Mappaselle, a director with local environment group Pokja Pesisir.
About 400 hectares of mangrove forests along the coastline of Balikpapan Bay have already been cleared, to make way for a coal port and oil refinery, the group said.
He feared more could be razed when a new toll road is built connecting Nusantara to the nearest city of Balikpapan, as well as a port to bring in construction materials.
The Nusantara Capital City Authority said that mangroves would be replanted in other areas and guidelines have been made for workers encountering an animal.
“It’s a very high concern of how we’ll try to have harmony between people, nature and culture ... because that’s the soul of the city,” Nusantara Capital City Authority head Bambang Susantono said.
Foundations are being laid for government buildings. Later this year, homes are to be built for 16,000 civil servants, military and police officers due to move in next year.
For now, conservationists hope the government stays true to its pledge to care for animals.
“We hope that with the capital city being here, we can pave the way for animals to live side by side [with humans],” BOSF manager Aldrianto Priadjati said.
“At least provide an area for orangutans so they can live a better life,” Priadjati added.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS