JAKARTA — Nearly 200,000 people have signed a petition calling on U.K. multinational Jardine Matheson to cancel its plan to expand deeper into Indonesia’s Batang Toru Forest, the only known habitat of the world’s most threatened great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan.

Jardines is the parent company of Indonesian conglomerate Astra International, which in turn is the parent of Agincourt Resources, the company operating the Martabe gold mine in northern Sumatra. From 2016 to 2020, Agincourt cleared 100 hectares (about 250 acres) of forest in its concession. And it’s set to clear even more under its expansion plan, which calls for a new site for its mining waste, or tailings, as the current tailings facility nears capacity and production is expected to ramp up.

Under the plan, laid out in the company’s 2020 environmental impact assessment, 583 hectares (1,441 acres) will have to be cleared for the tailings site, service roads, a dam and a buffer zone, according to Riezcy Cecilia Dewi, a campaigner at Indonesian environmental NGO Satya Bumi.

She said this is much larger than the total 98 hectares (242 acres) that Agincourt stated in January 2024 would be needed for the tailings facility and for slope stability and drainage.

But regardless of how much deforestation the expansion plan entails, any clearing of the native forest will be devastating for the survival of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), Riezcy said. The critically endangered species has a total estimated population of fewer than 800, and is found only in Batang Toru.

“Land preparation for the tailings management facility will turn forested areas into open land, significantly reducing orangutan habitat and leading to long-term extinction risks,” Riezcy said.

According to biodiversity surveys conducted in 2008, 2013, 2016, and 2017, Agincourt’s mining site has a high tree density and is home to several protected species besides orangutans, such as siamang gibbons (Symphalangus syndactylus) and silvered leaf monkeys (Trachypithecus cristatus).

The planned expansion site is still forested land and has been recognized by conservation group Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) as a key biodiversity area, Riezcy said.

KBAs are defined as holding “a significant proportion of the global population size of a species facing a high risk of extinction, and so contribute to the global persistence of biodiversity at genetic and species levels.” AZE sites, in turn, are a subset of KBAs that require the most urgent need of conservation to prevent the imminent extinction of the site’s key species, in this case the Tapanuli orangutan.

Call for action

Faced with these mounting threats, environmental groups have mobilized global public support through petitions and direct action, calling for Jardines and Agincourt to immediately stop the expansion of the Martabe gold mine and all activity that threatens biodiversity.

Two online petitions have garnered more than 193,000 signatures so far. On Feb. 27, the NGOs submitted the petitions and their demand to the Indonesian government as well as to Agincourt.

“Today, 190,000 people from around the world have sent a clear and urgent message to Jardine Matheson and Martabe: no amount of gold is worth the risk to the future of the world’s rarest orangutan,” said Fatah Sadaoui, campaign director at Ekō, one of the NGOs organizing the campaign.

The campaign also calls on Jardines to adopt a “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation” (NDPE) policy for its mining business, given that the multinational’s palm oil arm already has such a policy in place.

On the same day, the NGOs also staged protests outside the Jakarta offices of the Ministry of Forestry and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. They accused the government of failing to enforce conservation safeguards by allowing mining operations to continue in a designated KBA. They said the government must revoke the Martabe gold mine’s permits.

An energy ministry official who received the protesters said they would escalate the demands to senior officials.

Despite widespread opposition to the mine, Indonesian regulators haven’t publicly addressed calls for a review of its permits. Instead, the environment ministry has twice given Agincourt a “green” award for compliance, most recently earlier this year.

Activists have long criticized the award, known as PROPER, as a greenwashing gimmick aimed at making firms appear more environmentally friendly than they actually are, since mining companies often dominate the list of recipients of the top-tier gold and green categories.

Corporate response

In response to the protesters’ calls, Jardines has defended the expansion plan as necessary for Agincourt to continue operating the Martabe mine safely and responsibly and ensure land safety and water quality for the mining community and neighboring Batang Toru district.

Jardines told Mongabay that Agincourt has implemented several measures to limit the environmental impact of the expansion, including forming a biodiversity advisory panel (BAP) in 2020, comprising conservation experts tasked with assessing and reducing risks to wildlife.

It also pointed to post-mining reforestation initiatives, saying that as of the end of 2024, Agincourt had rehabilitated 44 hectares (109 acres) of land, with an additional 120 hectares (297 acres) to be rehabilitated by 2030.

On whether it would adopt an NDPE policy for its mining subsidiaries, Jardines said this isn’t a universal standard for the mining industry, as it is for palm oil.

These defenses amount to greenwashing, according to Uli Arta Siagian, forest and plantation campaign manager at Walhi, Indonesia’s biggest environmental NGO. She said nothing prevents Jardines from voluntarily applying similar principles to NDPE to Agincourt’s operations, and that while rehabilitation efforts may be beneficial, they can’t compensate for the irreversible impact of primary forest loss and habitat fragmentation.

Even with various technological interventions and replanting efforts, degraded landscapes can’t support the same biodiversity levels as intact and unfragmented forests, as required by the Tapanuli orangutans to survive, Uli said.

“Show me one place where a company has truly carried out post-mining reclamation according to environmental standards and restored the land’s original function as it should be,” she told Mongabay.

If Jardines is truly committed to environmental and biodiversity conservation, Uli said, then it would have scrapped the expansion plan and rehabilitated all the forest that had been cleared for the mine’s operation.

“If they were truly committed to the environment, they would limit their activities instead of expanding. Instead, they continue to expand while hiding behind so-called environmental commitments that are impossible to fulfill in the mining sector,” Uli said.

The NGOs that submitted the petition and demands also took issue with Agincourt’s pledge to minimize the mine’s impact on orangutan habitat and the surrounding ecosystem.

“The use of the term ‘minimize’ acknowledges that the mine will still cause environmental damage, as clearly stated in Agincourt’s Environmental Impact Assessment,” the NGOs said. “Given that the Tapanuli orangutan population is already at a crisis point, any level of destruction is unacceptable. The mining expansion must be stopped immediately.”

Change of plan

Jardines said Agincourt had already scrapped an earlier plan to build a new tailings management facility in the eastern part of the mining concession, following a recommended from the BAP that this area was sensitive forest. Jardines said the new facility will be developed in an area away from sensitive forest and high-quality habitat areas.

According to Jardines, only 120 hectares of secondary and degraded forest will be cleared for the new tailings management facility. However, the NGOs note that Agincourt’s own 2020 environmental impact assessment states that 583 hectares, including roads and buffer zones, will be affected. If Agincourt has revised these figures, they say, then it must submit a new impact assessment and obtain new environmental permits.

“This raises the question: is Jardine Matheson denying the validity of Agincourt’s official environmental impact assessment, or is the company deliberately misleading the public to justify further deforestation in Batang Toru?” the NGOs said.

Changes in project activities require Agincourt to submit a new environmental impact assessment, as any modifications to the originally approved plan will create new environmental impacts, the NGOs said. As such, if the expansion plan goes beyond the parameters of what the 2020 assessment allows, then it risks being illegal, they said.

“If PT Agincourt truly stands by its claim that only 120 hectares will be cleared, then it must explain how this change has been incorporated into its environmental permits,” the NGOs said. “Has Agincourt submitted a revision of its Environmental Impact Assessment, which originally stated that 583 hectares would be cleared? Since the 2020 Environmental Impact Assessment was an addendum made specifically to accommodate expansion plans, has this document been updated accordingly?”

Agincourt and Jardines must to answer these questions by providing an official clarification regarding the inconsistencies in land clearance figures, the NGOs said.

“Without full transparency, there is no way to ensure that this expansion is truly aligned with sustainability principles and does not sacrifice the environment and biodiversity of Batang Toru,” they said.

‘Corporate greed driving biodiversity destruction’

Saving the Batang Toru Forest isn’t only crucial for the survival of the Tapanuli orangutan and other threatened species there, but also for the people whose livelihoods depend on the forest, Walhi’s Uli said.

She said there are at least 1,200 hectares (about 3,000 acres) of rice fields located around the Batang Toru landscape, all of which depend on water from the forest. These rice fields are at risk of disappearing if the Martabe gold mine continue expanding into the forest, Uli said.

“If deforestation in Batang Toru continues — whether due to the Martabe mine or other extractive activities — the water flow from the Batang Toru Forest will keep diminishing,” she said. “Eventually, this will indirectly lead to the loss of these rice fields, as there will no longer be a water source to irrigate them.”

She said this would directly contradict President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship program of developing the country’s agricultural sector to achieve food self-sufficiency.

“If the president truly prioritizes food security through the hands of farmers, he should have the courage to evaluate and revoke the permits of companies operating in the Batang Toru landscape,” Uli said.

Beyond saving a single species, activists say this battle represents a larger struggle over corporate accountability, environmental justice, and Indonesia’s conservation future.

“The Tapanuli Orangutan is not just a symbol; it is living proof that biodiversity destruction driven by corporate greed is not a distant threat — it is happening now,” said Sadaoui from Ekō.

The responsibility now lies with both corporations and regulators, he said.

“From Jakarta to London and across the world, people are demanding that corporations like Jardine Matheson take responsibility for protecting nature,” Sadaoui said. “Jardine Matheson must take real action to save the Tapanuli Orangutan before it is too late.”

Banner image: Two Tapanuli orangutans in Batang Toru forest, North Sumatra, Indonesia, in September 2018. Image courtesy of Prayugo Utomo/Wikimedia Commons.

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