Apes under threat from green fuels

Apes under threat from green fuels
Conservationist slams destruction of jungle habitat to produce palm oil

The threat to great apes, such as the orang-utan, is "growing visibly" as a result of the demand for greener fuels, Richard Leakey, the paleo-anthropologist and conservationist warned yesterday.

On a visit to London, the former head of the Kenya Wildlife Service said that the shift away from fossil fuels to biofuels was "a great concern" as huge areas of forest in south-east Asia had already been cleared for palm oil plantations, and the pressure could only increase.

The Great Apes Survival Project, a United Nations initiative of which Dr Leakey is patron, says 80 per cent of orang-utan habitat has been cleared in the past 20 years and the global population of 50,000 is struggling to survive in what is left.

Dr Leakey said that the growing of palm oil was now a threat in Africa too, where vast areas of the Congo basin contain gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

He said it might be "politically correct" not to criticise developing nations for destroying their forests but they did not deserve to be exempt from blame because the destruction of tropical forests was the largest single contributor to climate change.

"People tend to shrug their shoulders and say what are poor countries to do if they can't exploit their natural resources. That's all very well but it's not sustainable."

Acknowledging a European Union report last month, which said that its green fuel targets would accelerate the destruction of rainforest, Dr Leakey said he would like to see the EU step "beyond" biofuels.

"I would like to see climate change stimulate the creation of wholly new sources of energy, hydrogen being one and fusion another. A crisis of this kind should create a revolution in opportunities. Let's move on."

Dr Leakey said that climate change agreements, such as the successor to Kyoto which may be negotiated this year, gave opportunities for new financial mechanisms to enable the private sector to protect forests - for carbon as well as biodiversity.