The Borneo Rainforest

The Borneo rain timbre is dictated in Borneo which is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java, Ind wizsia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia. The Rainforest is 130 million years old, which makes it the oldest rainforest in the world. The Borneo rainforest is single of the only remaining natural habitats for the endangered Bornean Orangutan. It is an important refuge for umteen endemic forest species, including the Asian Elephant, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, the Bornean Clouded Leopard, the Hoses Civet and the Dayak output Bat.The Borneo lowland rain forests cover or so of the island, with an demesne of 427,500 squ atomic number 18 kilometers. The Borneo dope rainforests lie in the central highlands of the island, above the 1,000 meters elevation. There ar species of birds arrange in the forest and 13 mammals. Tourism is withal a ordinary thing in the Rainforest, with resorts and tours available. In the 1980s and 1990s Borneo unde rwent a rum transition. Its forests were levelled at a rate unparalleled in human history.Borneos rainforests went to industrialize countries like Japan and the United States in the form of garden furniture, piece pulp and chopsticks. Initially most of the timber was taken from the Malaysian sort out of the island in the northern states of Sabah and Sarawak. Later forests in the southern part of Borneo, an bea belonging to Indonesia and k straightwayn as Kalimantan, became the primary source for tropical timber. today the forests of Borneo are but a shadow of those of legend and those that remain are highly threatened by the emerging biofuels market, specifically, anele palm.Oil palm is the most productive vegetable oil seed in the world. A single hectare of oil palm may yield 5,000 kilograms of crude oil, or nearly 6,000 liters of crude, qualification the crop remarkably profitable when grown in large plantations, one study that looked at 10,000 hectare-plantations sugge sts an internal rate of return of 26 portion annually. As such, vast swathes of land are being converted for oil palm plantations. Oil palm cultivation has expanded in Indonesia from 600,000 hectares in 1985 to more than 6 million hectares by early 2007, and was expected to come home 10 million hectares by 2010.Despite this outlook, in that location has newly been some constructive conservation news out of Borneo. In February 2007, the governments of Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia agreed to protect round 220,000 square kilometers of tropical forest in the so-called Heart of Borneo. environmental group WWF was particularly active in the establishment of the protected area. WWF says there are four big threats to Borneos forests land conversion, illegal logging, poor forest management, and forest fires.It adds that large-scale industrial projects (roads, and hydroelectric projects like the Bakun dam) and hunting are also threats, but to a lesser degree. A further introduce is t he climate of corruption, which permeates virtually all levels of government in Kalimantan. Forestry decisions are this instant made at the district level, where officials are said to be sometimes easily swayed by money. A strategically gifted motorbike bunghole often win influence at the village level. A rudimentary problem is that development in Borneo is driven by extractive industries at front there are few economic alternatives.These industries are rarely sustainable, in particular when little is invested in long-term management of resources. The causes of deforestation in Borneo are not complex the solutions are. After large-scale deforestation in the lowlands and the importation of millions of people through poorly-executed transmigration programs, there are few economic options in most of Borneo. Having lost jobs in the forestry sector, many villages are faced with having to shape whether to give up the remaining forest for oil palm or continue with subsistence living .Oil palm plantations certainly offer economic potential, especially when they are planted on already deforested and degraded lands, but it makes little feel to establish them on increasingly scare areas of natural forest. Social safeguards are also required to ensure labour abuse and sharecropping schemes are avoided. The roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is one initiative running(a) on equitable and sustainable palm oil production. Conservation is also an urgent priority in Borneo, especially in biologically different regions that have so far escaped the ravages of intensive logging and fires.The recent Heart of Borneo initiative is a shining example of whats possible. However, it is absolutely lively that once protected areas are established, they are maintained. The history of protected areas in Kalimantan where large percentages of supposedly protected area was logged and distributed for development is disheartening, but now is the time to move beyond this and plan for a future where conserve areas are actually protected and sustainable use of buffer zones is maximized. - 1 . Borneo, 2012, accessed on 12/10/2012 at http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Borneo 2 . Wildlife of Borneo, 2011, accessed on 12/10/2012 at http//www. mongabay. com/borneo/borneo_wildlife. html 3 . Borneo forest, 2011, accessed on the 16/10/12 at http//www. google. com. au/url? sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. wired. com%2Fnews%2Fculture%2F0%2C1284%2C62252%2C00. tml&ei=6sl_UMumLvCTiQemroFA&usg=AFQjCNE5UyM5Tg7VfoCUxhW1_RLCwwZwHg&sig2=tOBloXyugLND1LNqqDiz_A 4 . WWF, 2012, accessed on the 17/10/12 at http//wwf. panda. org/what_we_do/where_we_work/borneo_forests/ 5 . WWF BORNEO, 2012, accessed on the 17/10/ 2012 http//wwf. panda. org/what_we_do/where_we_work/borneo_forests/ 6 . WWF, 2012, accessed on the 17/10/12 at http//wwf. panda. org/what_we_do 7 . Deforestation in Borneo, 2012 , accessed on the 17/10/2012 at http//en. wikiped ia. org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Borneo