TheAsiaPulp&PapercompanyoftheSinarMasGroup(SMG/APP)portraitsitselfasa saviour of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. Investigations by the NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest (EoF) show that the forest clearing operations of APP and its suppliers appear to be one of the major threats to the survival of the tiger in Riau, Sumatra.

"APP/SMG: The pulping continues"analyzes the “sustainability roadmap” issued by controversial Indonesia deforester Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). The analysis found there is no natural forest left to apply their new policies to in Riau Province, since all natural forest in their ‘own’ concessions had either already been cleared or protected under Indonesian law or APP showcase commitments which are also mostly nothing more than confirmation that the company would obey the law. The report finds "the fate of up to 1.2 million hectares, more than half of Riau’s remaining forest, remains in danger of being cleared by APP/SMG’s so-called 'independent suppliers' who can continue to deliver natural forest wood to the company’s mills unaffected by the new forest policies." These forests include some of the last refuges of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger and elephant, as well as forests on carbon-rich deep peat, whose clearing will lead to very high carbon emissions for decades to come.
Not only is APP backtracking from the broken sustainability commitments of 2004 and 2007, it also appears to be moving back from commitments made just a year ago in its “Vision 2020, a roadmap to guide sustainability principles, goals and program.” In this announcement, APP said it would “source 100 percent of its pulpwood supply from sustainable plantation stock by the end of 2015”. The 2012 roadmap switches terminology from “100 per cent sourcing” to “100 per cent capability” with the introduction of a new loophole for “Mixed Tropical Hardwood (MTH) waste & residues”.
"APP/SMG: The pulping continues" includes photographic evidence of clearfelled rainforest areas APP calls “waste and residues.

In May and September 2011 Eyes on the Forests investigated on clearcutting into the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape by PT Artelindo Wiratama, an affiliated to Asia Pulp & Paper.This forest clear-cutting occurs in good natural forest that should be protected.

Report on the investigations conducted in October 2011 inside concession of PT Arara Abadi of Nilo district, an APP subsidiary and main supplier in the province. Eyes on the Forest found at least 250 hectares of natural forest that has just been clearcut by APP’s subsidiary, PT Arara Abadi, where no heavy machines found there at the time when investigation conducted. The license for this concession is a part of permit granted to the company amounting to 299,975 hectares based on Minister of Forestry Decree Number 743/Kpts-II/1996, dated 25 November 1996. Data obtained from Riau Forestry Service says the concession of PT Arara Abadi distrik Nilo is around 26,438 hectares. The APP subsdiary has converted natural forest to pulpwood plantation (industrial timber plantation/HTI) since end of 1990s. It means that this concession has harvested acacia trees for 2-3 times since it was first clearcut. In early July 2011 a Sumatran tiger found dead after being trapped by snare for six days in land that part of PT Arara Abadi’s concession where it was found starving and in a worse condition.

In 2009, people in North America consumed about 80 million tons of paper. But not all tissue and paper towels are made from responsible sources. According to tihs report, the fastest growing brand of toilet paper in the United States today, Paseo, has a direct link to rain forest destruction. Paseo toilet paper and tissue products are made from pulp from the Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).

In response to the Eyes on the Forest, Asia Pulp and Paper issued a press release titled, "APP Calls for Facts, not Fiction, about Forest Protection." Naturally, the public at large will be inclined to ask whether the EoF investigative report is actually fiction, as implied by APP, rather than fact.
Greenomics Indonesia feels compelled to respond to the APP in the form of a Greenomics report, given that the EoF report quoted from a number of Greenomics reports as one of the grounds on which it based its conclusions. In these Greenomics reports, all of our arguments were based on legal and official documents issued by the APP Group itself, which were submitted to and approved by the Ministry of Forestry. In responding to APP’s press release, Greenomics Indonesia also feels it necessary to highlight a misleading PR effort directed at the Secretary General of the Ministry of Forestry on 16 December 2011 during a meeting that was attended by APP representatives at the request of the Secretary General of the Minister of Forestry in order to discuss the case of PT Ruas Utama Jaya (RUJ), an APP wood supplier operating in Riau Province that have a concession extending to 44,330 hectares. During this meeting, the APP representatives purported to explain various issues concerning the operations of RUJ, including the RUJ operations map and land cover conditions in the area.
It should be stressed here that the practice of clearing natural forest on the RUJ concession has become the principal issue that gave rise to the bitter war of words between EoF and APP in the wake of the publication of the EoF report. In this Greenomics Indonesia report, we shall discuss four things, namely:
* Legal concession map versus commitment to the protection of Sumatran tiger habitat in the RUJ concession;
* The clearing of Sumatran tiger habitat in the RUJ concession;
* The driving of Sumatran tigers from the RUJ concession to deep-peat concession areas; and
* Misleading PR by APP in respect of the part of the RUJ concession which APP claims has been set aside for conservation purposes.

APP continues repeating the same false statements together with some new twists, all trying to hide the ultimate foundation of the Sinar Mas Group/APP’s operations: the continuing destruction of natural tropical forest and drainage of peat soils. APP’s PR effort today is bigger and with more aggressive use of the media than ever before. APP has recruited a wide variety of publicists, individuals and supposedly independent NGOs to flack its allegedly green practices, including, Cohn & Wolfe, Environmental Resource Management, Alan Oxley and his World Growth and ITS Global, Mazars, Carbon Conservation, Patrick Moore and his Greenspirit Strategies, Bastoni and his Sumatran Tiger Conservation Foundation (YPHS). It runs its commercials globally on CNN, Sky TV and other international broadcasting channels.

In this report, Eyes on the Forest investigates APP’s PR claims. Has there been any improvement of SMG/APP’s practices on the ground? Has there been a reduction of the company’s impact on the world’s most diverse natural tropical forests, wildlife, and the world’s climate?

The answer is a straightforward: No. SMG/APP continues draining deep peat soils and clearing natural forests and its negative impact is increasing with the scale of its operations.

Greenomics Indonesia has taken the initiative of assessing the level of concern that is really exhibited by APP and APRIL for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. This initiative is intended to serve as a response to the aggressive and groundless PR arguments of the two companies, which claim that their operations exhibit a high level of concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. We frequently read and hear of claims from the pulp and paper industry, particularly APP, to the effect that their operations reflect a high level of concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. Many of these claims, however, are based on public relations arguments designed purely to mislead the public. The assessment of APP and APRIL’s concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger needs to be carried out at the level of each pulpwood plantation concession that supplies timber to the two companies. This is essential in order to evaluate the aggregate level of concern of APP and APRIL for the protection of the Sumatran tiger.

WWF camera traps recorded an astounding 12 tigers in just two months in the central Sumatran landscape of Bukit Tigapuluh, including two mothers with cubs. A video camera trap captured footage of three young tiger siblings playfully chasing a leaf.

Photographic evidence, aerial monitoring and field analysis details how the Sinar Mas group continues to clear rainforest containing priceless biodiversity – such as orangutan habitat - and carbon-rich peatlands, despite public promises it has made to clean up its act.

Sinar Mas group is notorious for its destruction of millions of acres of Indonesian rainforest, peatland and wildlife habitat. Two divisions within the group lead the destruction: pulp and palm oil. Recently, the group has diversified into coal.

40 European NGOs sent a letter to paper companies demanding to stop any eventual purchase of paper from the Indonesian-Chinese paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). APP and its fibre suppliers are estimated to be the single largest source of rainforest destruction in Sumatra and are pushing three highly endangered species - the Sumatran tiger, elephant and orang-utan - closer to extinction.

Doing business with APP at this time supports the further expansion of its operations into Indonesia’s last tropical forests and peatlands. The company is, in our view, the least responsible pulp and paper producer globally. Since it began operations in the 1980s, APP is estimated to have pulped more than 1 million hectares of natural forests in Sumatra. The company now has forestry operations in Kalimantan to fill wood supply gaps and is trying to enter Papua, Indonesia’s last forest frontier.

In 2009 Global Paper Giants APP and APRIL set out to pulp 5% of Riau’s remaining tropical rainforest erased identified High Conservation Value Forests deforested and drained legally protected deep peat cleared internationally recognized priority Sumatran tiger conservation forests.

This Eyes on the Forest report focuses on large scale deforestation by APP and APRIL against their own published sustainability policies and commitments to buyers, investors and the general public to protect High Conservation Value Forests, critical species habitats and the climate. Their actions challenge our President’s commitment to reduce the country’s carbon emissions. They undermine Indonesia’s commitment to ensure the survival of the critically endangered tiger.

In 2009 Global Paper Giants APP and APRIL set out to pulp 5% of Riau’s remaining tropical rainforest erased identified High Conservation Value Forests deforested and drained legally protected deep peat cleared internationally recognized priority Sumatran tiger conservation forests.

It is the United Nation’s Year of Biodiversity It is the Chinese Year of the Tiger Yet Asia Pulp & Paper’s clearing of tiger forests in Indonesia’s GSK UNESCO Biosphere Reserve continues.

Sumatra’s peat swamp forests not only provide habitat for endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger, they are also of critical importance in mitigating climate change. The clearing and draining of peatlands is the key reason why Indonesia is the world’s third largest GHG emitter.

The report shows how major brands like Walmart, Auchan and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) are fueling climate change and pushing Sumatran tigers and orang-utans towards the brink of extinction. zoom Download the full report These companies are using or selling paper made from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), part of the notorious Sinar Mas group that is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands. Greenpeace investigated two important rainforest areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and discovered that Sinar Mas is wreaking environmental havoc in both. The Bukit Tigapuluh Forest Landscape is one of the last refuges for endangered Sumatran tigers and orang-utans. Kerumutan’s carbon rich peatlands are a key defence against climate change; some of the forest’s peat is deeper than three meters and thus illegal to clear under Indonesian law. Sinar Mas' paper arm APP uses the logs from these rainforest areas to feed its Sumatran based pulp mills, which export pulp and paper products worldwide.

An Eyes on the Forest (EoF) investigation conducted in November - December 2009 confirmed that two Industrial Timber Plantation companies associated with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) of Sinar Mas Group (SMG), namely PT Bina Duta Laksana (PT BDL) and PT Mutiara Sabuk Khatulistiwa (PT MSK), continue to clear natural forest and dig drainage canals through the deep peat inside Kerumutan forest block under legally questionable circumstances. The forest clearance and peat draining by the two companies started in 2005.

An investigation by Eyes on the Forest has found that companies associated with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP)/Sinar Mas Group (SMG) are completing construction of a legally questionable logging highway through a peatland forest block in Riau Province that is important for the conservation of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). The highway project is part of a continuing pattern of forest destruction by APP/SMG and their associated companies in central Sumatra.

Reports findings that APP-associated companies have been converting the Landscape's natural forests without proper professional assessments or stakeholder consultation and sometimes even without proper licenses, threatening the survival of Sumatran tigers, Sumatran orangutans and elephants living in this forest landscape. Part of the area being cleared - in violation of Indonesian law - is part of a proposed Specific Protected Area that serves as habitat for Sumatran orangutans recently introduced into the area for the first time in more than 150 years.