The conservation of tigers and other wildlife in oil palm plantations

PROJECT FRAMEWORK
Study objective
The aim of this study was to investigate the impacts of palm oil on mammals and the
potential for reducing these impacts. The study focused on large, terrestrial mammals,
specifically the Sumatran tiger.
Study location
The study was located within and around the PT Asiatic Persada oil palm concession
and the adjoining PT Asialog HPH (selective logging) concession in Jambi Province on
the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, approximately 90 km from the city of Jambi. The
nearest major protected areas are Suaka Marga Satwa Dangku (35km) and Taman
Nasional Bukit 12 (50km). The majority of work was focussed on the oil palm
plantation and the fringes of the logging concession.
PT Asiatic Persada was formed in 1979 and by 1996 represented a total concession size
of 27,000 hectares. A central processing mill was built in 1994 and a major phase of
planting and clearing took place until 1996, with palm oil production starting in 1997.
Pacific Rim Palm Oil Limited, (PRPOL), part of the Commonwealth Development
Cooperation (CDC) acquired a majority holding of 51% in AP in early 2000 and took
over management in February 2000. By this time major forest fires in 1997 and poor
maintenance of plantings had reduced the original area of cultivated land to
approximately 9000ha, with the remaining 18,000 ha consisting predominantly of clear
felled areas that had re-grown as bamboo-dominated scrub and ex-logging areas that
had been heavily logged but not clear-felled. From 2004 clearing and planting was
restarted, with the aim of increasing production from 45,000 tonnes of crude palm oil
(CPO) to 63,000 tonnes, however 15% of the concession was earmarked to remain
fallow for conservation purposes (PRPOL, 2003). In 2005 PRPOL was acquired by
American commodities company Cargill and in late 2006 it changed hands again to oil
palm company Wilmar International.
Figure 2 - Location of the oil palm plantation (PT Asiatic Persada) and logging concession
(PT Asialog).
Wildlife conservation in oil palm plantations 15