JAKARTA — A palm oil company is gearing up to expand into critical orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo, raising alarms over the survival of the critically endangered great apes. PT Equator Sumber Rezeki (ESR) is part of Jakarta-based First Borneo Group, which is currently one of the most active deforesters in Indonesia’s palm oil industry. ESR recently started clearing forest inside its 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) concession in West Kalimantan province. An analysis by U.S.-based campaign group Mighty Earth found that more than 200 hectares (about 500 acres) of forest had been cleared in the far west of ESR’s concession between August 2024 and February 2025. Mapping analysis of deforestation in palm oil company PT Equator Sumber Rezeki (ESR), part of First Borneo Group, in West Kalimantan. Image courtesy of Mighty Earth. And there are signs ESR plans to clear even more forest. The company is currently in the process of mapping the exact boundaries of its concession, which covers an area the size of Washington, D.C., and surveying the land to match physical terrain with legal land parcels, a process known as cadastral registration. This process typically precedes the issuance of a license known as the right to cultivate, or HGU, which is the final one in a series of permits needed before large-scale land clearing and plantation activity can begin. The issue with this is that the ESR concession consists of mostly intact, high-quality forest. Although First Borneo Group has never conducted an official assessment, conservationists estimate that at least…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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