By Sunanda Creagh

JAKARTA, July 29 (Reuters) - Greenpeace on Thursday issued
fresh accusations that palm oil firms linked to Indonesian
agribusiness giant Sinar Mas have bulldozed rainforest and
destroyed endangered orangutan habitats in Kalimantan.

Sinar Mas group's palm oil unit, PT SMART Tbk lost top
customers Unilever and Nestle after earlier Greenpeace
allegations of virgin forest destruction.

SMART has promised to stop clearing high conservation value
forests, a technical forestry term meaning forests that shelter
endangered species or provide valuable natural services such as
trapping climate-warming greenhouse gases. SMART said it will
publish an audit of its operations on August 10.
SMART manages Indonesian palm oil firms, PT Agro Lestari
Mandiri (ALM) and PT Bangun Nusa Mandiri (BNM). The parent
company for SMART, ALM and BNM is Singapore-listed Golden
Agri-Resources, which is part-owned and led by the Widjaja
family that controls Sinar Mas.

Greenpeace said in a report released on Thursday that
aerial photographs taken in July by their own photographers, as
well as by a Reuters photographer, showed that ALM was still
clearing carbon-rich peatland forests in Ketapang district, in
Indonesia's West Kalimantan province.

"What we found was that, despite their commitment, high
carbon destruction is still going on," said Greenpeace forest
campaigner, Bustar Maitar.

"This is still happening, even while their auditor is
writing the report."

Enormous amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted when
peatland forests are cleared and drained. Their preservation is
seen as crucial to preventing runaway climate change.

Greenpeace also published photographs which it said showed
BNM clearing in an area in Ketapang that was identified by the
United Nations Environment Program as habitat for highly
endangered orangutans.

Fajar Reksoprodjo, a spokesman for SMART, told Reuters that
all concessions it operated were granted by the government.

"We are working based upon what the government has
allocated for us. Presumably the issuance for that is because
it's not deemed by the government as high conservation value,"
he said.

He said that in the past, aerial photographs that appeared
to show clearing in peatlands had been misinterpreted.

"What was thought by layman's or non-expert eyes was peat,
turned out to be mineral soil. It has the same colouration."

SMART originally said it would release its audit in July
but delayed it to the second week of August because it was not
yet finished.

The auditors are paid by SMART and were selected in
collaboration with Unilever, which chairs the Round Table on
Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an industry body made up of
producers, consumers and non-government organisations.

Agribusiness giant Cargill Inc has threatened to delist
Sinar Mas as a supplier if the RSPO validates allegations of
improper land conversion in earlier Greenpeace reports.
(Editing by Sara Webb and Miral Fahmy)