"Korindo is heralding a gold-rush-type land grab in the area of Indonesia with the largest intact rainforest landscapes," Lapidus said, "and bringing an outdated and destructive model of large-scale bulldoze-and-burn commodity agriculture to one of the most remote, highly forested and biodiverse areas left on Earth." Another 75,000 hectares of untouched forest remain at imminent risk of destruction in Korindo's palm oil concessions. Since 2013 alone, Korindo has cleared 30,000 hectares, 12,000 hectares of which were primary forest. A West Papuan tree kangaroo - the original tree-hugger Image: Greenpeace/G. According to "Burning Paradise," an exposé released September 1, 2016, by Mighty Earth, Korindo has cleared more than 50,000 hectares of tropical lowland forest in Papua and North Maluku to make way for palm oil plantations - often through illegal burning - and it is aggressively expanding operations. Korindo has also become a major palm oil producer.
Palm tree cockatoo driver#
Korindo: Spearhead of West Papua's deforestationĪ Korean-Indonesian conglomerate called Korindo is now the leading driver of deforestation on the Indonesia-administered western half of Papua.įounded by Korean businessman Eun-Ho Seung in 1969 as a spinoff from his father's logging business, Korindo now has 20,000 employees working for subsidiaries involved not only in timber, but also in heavy industries, cargo logistics, real estate and finance. More than 27.6 million hectares of a total of 34.6 million hectares of forest in West Papua have been designated as "production forest" - that is, slated for logging or conversion to palm oil plantations.
Mature oil palms on a West Papua plantation, managed by Korindo conglomerate subsidiary PT Tunas Image: AidenvironmentĪnd for loggers and oil palm plantation corporations, these territories are the commercial frontier, where land not yet "in production" is up for grabs. For native Papuan tribes, including some as-yet uncontacted groups, the forests are their ancient homelands. But on West Papua, 80 percent of the natural forest is still intact."įor conservationists, the forest-blanketed islands of Papua and North Maluka are places to take a last stand on behalf of Oceania's biodiversity. "Most of Indonesia's other islands, like Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Sumatra, have already been largely deforested. "West Papua and the nearby islands of North Maluku are Indonesia's final frontier," said Deborah Lapidus, a campaigner with Mighty Earth, a new global environmental campaign launched by the Washington-based Center for International Policy with partners in Korea and Indonesia. All around the tropical world, including on the island of Papua, enormous oil palm monocultures are replacing the planet's most biodiverse natural forests. There are around forty different species of birds-of-paradise in Papua and Indonesia, including this Wilson's bird of paradise Image: Imago/Nature Picture Libraryīut with deforestation ravaging the landscape, driven by humanity's ravenous appetite for palm oil, that list is getting shorter. Tree kangaroos that look like big teddy bears (picture at top) wallabies, pademelons, cuscus, ringtails and sugar gliders bandicoots and echidnas dozens of bat and rodent species - about 80 percent of Papua's 357 known mammals are found nowhere else.Īnd birds, oh so many charming birds: a whole gamut of bird-of-paradise species, one more flamboyantly beautiful than the next bellbirds, palm cockatoos and hornbills hawk owls, kookaburras and flame bowerbirds king parrots, golden mynas and spotted jewel babblers - the list of lovely avians flying the jungles of Papua is hundreds long. Tens of millions of years of continuous biological evolution on the archipelago of big tropical islands north of Australia have given rise to stunningly diverse ecosystems. The island of Papua is home to an exuberant array of animals.
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