Hans Nicholas Jong, 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.
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 80% of ESR's concession qualifies as high conservation value (HCV) forest. That's because they overlap with the habitat of the critically endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).
According to a population and habitat viability assessment (PHVA) compiled by a team of primatologists and the Indonesian government, a quarter of ESR's concession, or 3,827 hectares (9,457 acres), overlaps with orangutan habitat.
Between January 2024 and March 2025, 27 hectares (67 acres) of this land was cleared, covering a combined area the size of 20,000 parking spaces.
Although the clearing so far is relatively small, ongoing and planned clearing poses a serious threat to the survival of orangutans in the region, according to Amanda Hurowitz, forest commodities lead at Mighty Earth.
"Expanding into precious orangutan habitat is outrageous, disrupting the natural environment, and making it difficult for orangutans to find food, shelter, and mates," she told Mongabay.
It also poses a threat to the remaining rainforests inside the concession. Conservationists estimate that up to 10,000 hectares (nearly 25,000 acres) of forest could be lost if land clearing proceeds as expected.
Andi Muttaqien, director of environmental NGO Satya Bumi, called the planned forest clearing by ESR "deeply alarming." He pointed out that clearing forests within HCV areas and protected species habitats clearly contradicts sustainability principles and Indonesia's commitments to biodiversity and forest conservation, such as its goal to turn its forests into a net carbon sink by 2030 through curbing deforestation and reforestation.
Andi also questioned why the government had designated ESR's concession as a nonforest area, a zoning status that allows commercial development despite the presence of natural forest cover.
The government reportedly approved the zoning change in 2000. If it now proceeds to grant ESR the HGU license to clear the high conservation forest inside the concession, it will have failed abjectly to uphold the precautionary principle and environmental protection, Andi said.
He called on the government to immediately halt the HGU application process, conduct a comprehensive ecological audit of the ESR concession, and reassess the land-use feasibility in that area.
"Activities of this nature must be stopped before causing further damage to West Kalimantan's ecosystems and exacerbating the deforestation and climate crises," Andi told Mongabay.
He added First Borneo Group must also cease all land-clearing activities and immediately conduct independent and transparent HCV assessments. This is essential to fully protect orangutan habitat and HCV areas within ESR's concession, Andi said.
Mongabay contacted First Borneo Group for comment, but the company didn't respond by the time this story was published.
The environmental risks posed by ESR's expansion are amplified by First Borneo Group's deforestation track record. Its subsidiaries have consistently been linked to forest loss across multiple concessions, and were among the most significant contributors to palm oil-related deforestation, indicating a pattern of aggressive expansion at the expense of forest ecosystems.
Mighty Earth reported that it had detected 2,650 hectares (6,548 acres) of integrated deforestation alerts between March 2023 and March 2025 in the concession of PT Borneo International Anugerah (BIA), a First Borneo Group subsidiary. This makes it one of the highest rates of deforestation for oil palm in Indonesia for the period 2023-2024.
Mighty Earth also recorded 600 hectares (1,483 acres) of deforestation in the first half of 2022 in BIA's concession, making the company a repeat offender with sustained and large-scale forest clearance over multiple years.
Mighty Earth reported 750 hectares (1,853 acres) of integrated deforestation alerts in the concession of another First Borneo Group subsidiary, PT Arjuna Utama Sawit (AUS), between March 2023 and March 2025.
All these confirm that multiple subsidiaries of First Borneo are actively expanding, fueling concerns that ESR will soon do the same thing, watchdogs say.
In response to the ongoing deforestation in multiple First Borneo Group concessions, a significant number of palm oil buyers, including traders Musim Mas and Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), have acted swiftly to suspend purchases from the group.
At least six companies – Fuji Oil, Mewah, LDC, Permata, Nestle and Barry Callebaut – have confirmed to Mighty Earth that First Borneo Group is on their no-buy list. Another 15, such as Wilmar, Apical, Hershey and Pepsi, have confirmed they don't source from the group.
However, several companies still have First Borneo Group subsidiary AUS in their most recent mill lists. These include biofuel producers like Avril, Indorama, Oleon, Sakamoto Yakuhin Kogyo, Stearinerie Dubois and VVF, as well as consumer goods brands like Avon, Barry Callebaut, Beiersdorf, General Mills, Grupo Bimbo, Lion Corporation, Meiji, Mondelez, Nestle, P&G, PZ Cussons, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever.
That means there's a high risk that the global supply chains for products ranging from Crest toothpaste to Oreo cookies could be tainted with deforestation.
First Borneo Group is also connected through the supply chain via PT Samboja Inti Perkasa, a member of the Damai Group, which supplies to several major global brands such as Nestle, Mondelez, Colgate-Palmolive and others, according to Mighty Earth.
"We have now written to companies sourcing from the Damai Group, including traders such as AAK, Cargill and Wilmar, asking for urgent intervention on the case," Hurowitz said.
To rid the global supply chain of deforestation risk from Indonesian palm oil, buyers should immediately review their business relationships with companies under the First Borneo Group, Andi said. He added that the stakes are extremely high as the Bornean orangutan is on the brink of extinction in the wild.
The great ape's population has declined rapidly in the past few decades, with nearly 150,000 individuals lost between 1999 and 2015. By 2016, it was estimated that only 9,210 Bornean orangutans remained in West Kalimantan, where First Borneo Group has its concessions.The ESR concession appears to overlap with two orangutan metapopulations, in Betung Kerihun National Park, home to 1,790 of the apes, and in Danau Sentarum, home to 680. That means even the smallest disturbance to its habitat could impact a large proportion of the species' global population, Andi said.
If ESR proceeds with its expansion plan, he added, "An ecological disaster would become inevitable."