The Borneo Rainforest

The Borneo Rain timber is located in Borneo which is the third mountainousst island in the world and is located compass north of Java, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia. The Rainforest is 130 million years old, which makes it the oldest rain forest in the world. The Borneo rainforest is one of the only remaining natural habitats for the endangered Bornean Orangutan. It is an important refuge for many another(prenominal) endemic forest species, including the Asian Elephant, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, the Bornean Clouded Leopard, the Hoses Civet and the Dayak Fruit Bat.The Borneo lowland rain forests obliterate most of the island, with an argona of 427,500 squ ar kilometers. The Borneo mountain rainforests lie in the central highlands of the island, above the 1,000 meters elevation. There are species of birds found in the forest and 13 mammals. Tourism is also a popular thing in the Rainforest, with resorts and tours available. In the 1980s and 1990s Bo rneo underwent a remarkable transition. Its forests were levelled at a rate unparalleled in human history.Borneos rainforests went to industrialized countries like Japan and the United States in the form of garden furniture, paper slop and chopsticks. Initially most of the timber was taken from the Malaysian part of the island in the northern states of Sabah and Sarawak. Later forests in the southern part of Borneo, an area belonging to Indonesia and known as Kalimantan, became the primary source for tropical timber. forthwith 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, oil do by.Oil palm is the most productive oil seed in the world. A maven hectare of oil palm may yield 5,000 kilograms of crude oil, or nearly 6,000 liters of crude, making the crop unmistakably profitable when grown in large inventiontations, one study that looked at 10,000 hectare-plantations suggests an i nternal rate of feed of 26 percent 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 reach 10 million hectares by 2010.Despite this outlook, there has recently been some positivistic conservation news out of Borneo. In February 2007, the governments of Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia agreed to protect roughly 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 protect area. WWF says there are four big threats to Borneos forests land conversion, illegal logging, poor forest management, and forest fires.It adds that big industrial projects (roads, and hydroelectric projects like the Bakun dam) and hunting are also threats, but to a lesser degree. A further issue is the climate of corruption, which perme ates virtually all levels of government in Kalimantan. Forestry decisions are now make at the district level, where officials are said to be sometimes easily swayed by money. A strategically gifted motorbike can often win influence at the village level. A ingrained problem is that development in Borneo is driven by extractive industries at present there are a couple of(prenominal) economic alternatives.These industries are rarely sustainable, especially 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 by 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 decide whether to give up the remaining forest for oil palm or stay fresh with subsistence living.Oil palm plantations certainly offer e conomic potential, especially when they are planted on already deforested and degrade lands, but it makes little sense 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 plow Oil (RSPO) is one initiative working on equitable and sustainable palm oil production. saving is also an urgent priority in Borneo, especially in biologically diverse regions that have so far escaped the ravages of intensive logging and fires.The recent Heart of Borneo initiative is a shining exemplification of whats possible. However, it is absolutely critical 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 conserved areas are a ctually 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. hypertext markup language 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. wikipedia. org/wiki/Defor estation_in_Borneo