Orangutan Habitat Loss and Palm Mills in Indonesia: Our first Intelligence Report
Tags: GIS, Commodities, Maps, Agriculture, Deforestation

Orangutan, Tanjung Puting National Park © Leo Bottrill

In 2019, almost 1 in 5 mills in Indonesia lost over 20 soccer pitches of orangutan habitat loss in 2019. This statistic comes from our first Forest Intelligence Report — a monthly concise analysis of commodities sourced from high deforestation areas. This report — the first produced with our automated Forest Report technology — focuses on the top ten palm mills in Indonesia with the most Orangutan habitat loss in May 2019. The report lists which traders and buyers companies source from the mills and provides historical forest loss and forest cover statistics for the surrounding mill “neighborhood”. The report is free to download here.

Palm mills with high rates of orangutan habitat loss supply major traders and brands

Remaining Orangutan habitat in Kalimantan and the location of the top ten mills

In the past month, the top ten mills identified averaged 104 hectares of orangutan habitat loss. All are located in Kalimantan. These ten mills represent 1% of the 1049 mills identified in the Universal Mill List. In total, 144 mills in Indonesia had at least 1 hectare of orangutan habitat loss in the past month and one third of palm mills have orangutan habitat within 25km radius. Supply chain links were identified for nine out of ten concessions including a number of major oil palm traders and consumer brands. Two mills — Sepanjang Intisurya Mulia and PT Jabontara Eka Karsa — are RSPO certified. PT Jabontara Eka Karsa has 145,000 hectares of remaining orangutan habitat — the highest total of all mills in the Universal Mill List.

Example — Pundi Lahan Khatulistiwa Mill

Report title and pages

Pundi Lahan Khatulistiwa (PLK), operated by the Pundi Group, in West Kalimantan had 117 hectares of orangutan habitat loss in the past month and 480 hectares in 2019.

PLK Dashboard with analytics of the mill neighborhood

Almost 66% of PLK mill neighborhood is palm oil concessions with much of it overlapping peatland. Almost half of the neighborhood is tree plantations but 24% is still forest with high canopy density including the orangutan habitat areas that were cleared.

Sentinel imagery and supply chain data

Orangutan clearance was confirmed using recent Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 scenes. Finally, a database of Trader and buyer palm mill disclosures was reviewed, identifying 16 companies who may be buying from PLK mill and Pundi Group.

Forest Report Intelligence Service

Forest Report is an impartial, data driven service designed for companies, nonprofits, and government agencies. Pre-made intelligence reports such as this one will be available for purchase every month or through annual subscription. Intelligence reports will typically feature top ten list of commodities sourced from high risk areas. Comprehensive reports for whole company supply chains and sectors are also available.

Forest Report Software

Forest Report Dashboard, which was used to make is make this report, is also available for licensing. You can set up your data into lists, customized modules such as peatland or primary forest, and publish your own branded reports to the web or as PDFs.

Future reports

A new report with updated top ten lists and statistics will be released every month. We are releasing this first report for free. Future reports will be available for a fee or through an annual subscription. Please contact info@maphubs.com for subscription information.