PT Agriprima Cipta Persada is going ahead with its oil palm plantation in Muting even though it has been turned down for a permit. The forestry ministry has currently rejected the company’s application to release the land from the forest estate and classify it for other uses such as plantations. However the company is going ahead regardless and planting oil palm illegally. All photos, taken in December 2013, are courtesy of Greenpeace Papua.

Some time ago PT Agriprima Cipta Persada – a subsidiary of PT Agro Mandiri Semesta – cleared land for an oil palm nursery.

Now the company is clearing a much larger area of land and is planting out the palm oil seedlings.

Logging continues, with new blocks marked out to be felled.

A few trees are left in a sea of oil palm surrounding a sacred place for the Ndiken-Kezan clan. A sign forbids any form of hunting in this remnant of forest.

Part of the company’s newly-built office complex.

Local people at work in the nursery. In the planting stage there is plentiful work for both men and women, however this is likely to decrease once planting finishes and the trees mature.

A digger clears the forest wood from around newly planted oil palm, as the forest disappears into the distance.