PT Hutan Produksi Lestari continues to clear orangutan habitat in Indonesia

The Indonesian company PT Hutan Produksi Lestari has cleared 755 hectares of forest between January and August 2021. This makes it the fourth largest deforester for industrial trees in Indonesia in 2021 so far. Since January 2020, the company has owned an industrial tree concession of 10,050 hectares in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan province. The concession falls within the habitat of the Critically Endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).

In 2020, approximately 800 hectares of forest was cleared on the same concession. PT Hutan Produksi Lestari is owned by the Indonesian businessmen Iman Hartono and Willem Alexander Hartono. They also own a wood processing company named PT Prima Parquet Indonesia, located in Karanganyar district of Central Java province. This company produces plywood and flooring. Indonesian export data from 2020 show that plywood was sold to companies in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea.

Both PT Hutan Produksi Lestari and PT Prima Parquet Indonesia do not have any known sustainability commitments. Despite having a SVLK (Indonesia’s timber legality system) certificate, in early September 2021 timber from PT Hutan Produksi Lestari was stopped by the governor of Central Kalimantan from being shipped from a port in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan. It was suspected that some of the timber was not in line with official documents. However, results of the investigation remained undisclosed.

PT Hutan Produksi Lestari is not the first deforesting company Aidenvironment has reported on this year that is also clearing orangutan habitat. Nusantara Fiber cleared approximately 2,200 ha of forest between January and August, plus 6,500 last year, and has approximately 50,000 ha of orangutan habitat remaining on its concessions. Alas Kusuma, the second largest deforester this year, is also clearing orangutan habitat on its PT Mayawana Persada concession in West Kalimantan.

If orangutans are to survive in agricultural and forestry landscapes, companies like Nusantara Fiber, Alas Kusuma and PT Hutan Produksi Lestari must stop forest clearing and implement forest conservation measures.

For more information please contact Chris Wiggs