Fund study to protect peat swamps

IT is disheartening to learn about the plight of the orang utans in Palangkaraya, Kalimantan. The public are generally unaware of the fact that in the late 1990s, eight universities, funded by the European Union, formed a consortium to study tropical peat swamps to safeguard these global natural resources. Unfortunately, there is no funding for this type of research by Asean, and due to limited funding, no concrete monitoring can be done.

Awareness must be created that tropical peat swamps are ecologically and economically important globally and a natural supermarket where a diversity of living things, especially endemic species, is recorded. These include not only wild orang utan populations but also several peat swamp fishes and birds.