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KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 (AFP): Malaysia's palm oil industry denied today accusations it was driving orang-utans towards extinction.
Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth last month said demand for palm oil, which is widely used in processed foods, could cause Asia's only great ape to be wiped out within 12 years unless there was urgent intervention in the palm oil trade.
The Malaysian Palm Oil Association, Malaysian Palm Oil Board and Malaysian Palm Oil Promotion Council denied the charges, saying palm oil was a strategic, well-planned agricultural industry which supported the preservation of wildlife including the orang-utan.
"These allegations are not well founded and contain a number of factual inaccuracies," they said in a joint statement to the national Bernama news agency.
"The industry is far better regulated and the orang-utan far better protected than is suggested in the report," they said adding that the industry often preserved jungle reserves and wildlife sanctuaries as part of efforts to maintain the existing biodiversity found in plantations.
A recent survey showed that thousands of orang-utans remained in and around the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in east Sabah state on Borneo island, they added.
In a report which Friends of the Earth dubbed the "Oil for Ape Scandal", the environmental group said wildlife centres in Indonesia were over-run with orphaned baby orang-utans that had been rescued from forests being cleared to make way for new plantations.
"Almost 90 per cent of the orang-utan's habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia has now been destroyed. Some experts estimate that 5,000 orang-utan perish as a result every year," it said.
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