Orang-utan campaign heads to Westminster
Tuesday, 02 May 2006 08:35 Copyright InTheNew.co.uk
Orang-utan campaign heads to Westminster
Leading members of Britain's campaign to save endangered orang-utans are to lobby MPs at a Westminster reception this evening.
Hosted by Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and organised by Friends of the Earth, the event will be attended by prominent orang-utan campaigners including celebrity actress Joanna Lumley.
They will attempt to highlight the plight of the orang-utans, whose rainforests are being steadily destroyed by Britain's demand for palm oil, in an attempt to gain changes to the company law reform bill currently passing through parliament.
"Demand for palm oil is threatening the survival of these fantastic creatures and it is shocking that our demand for cheap food and other products is behind this," Mr Baker, the party's environmental affairs spokesperson, said.
"I believe we must take this opportunity to use the company law reform bill to ensure that UK companies take more responsibility for the impacts they have on the environment."
At present British supermarkets including Tesco, Somerfield and Morrisons are refusing to subscribe to an agreement on the "sustainable use" of palm oil, showing a disinterest the bill could forcibly change.
"The growth in demand for palm oil is putting pressure on precious areas of rainforest in Borneo and Sumatra, threatening the survival of the orang-utan," Friends of the Earth oil campaigner Ed Matthew said.
"MPs have the power to do something about this and we urge them to take this chance."
Palm oil, harvested from the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, can be found in one in ten products sold in Britain's supermarkets.
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The Orangutan Film Protection Project Team from Cockroach Productions will be attending this event and showing a video report from Indonesia, highlighting the plight of orangutans and local people in the face of the growing palm oil industry. Our hope is to rally British Government support for the sustainable sector of the industry, being led by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
Find out more at
www.cockroach.org.uk
Those of you in the UK keep your eyes peeled for the Really Wild Show on the BBC this Wednesday (May 17th) at 4:30pm. The show will feature a special report on the palm oil industry and its negative implications for the protection of rainforests and biodiversity in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Some of the footage shot by Cockroach Productions on location in Borneo and Sumatra will be included in the report, including rare film of a captured baby sun bear, a baby macaque being kept as a pet in a palm oil plantation in Central Sumatra, and an unusual shot of a (completely arboreal) gibbon running bipedally across cleared forest land.
Hopefully the show will inspire a new generation of budding conservationists to join the campaign.
