Palm oil plantations often replace tropical forests, killing endangered species, uprooting local communities, and contributing to the release of climate-warming gases. Orangutans and Palm Oil: Protecting Forests to Help Great Apes Palm oil plantations and illegal logging drive habitat loss.

Palm Oil Plantations are now the leading suppliers for a global market that demands more of the tree's versatile oil for cooking, cosmetics, and biofuel. But palm oil's appeal comes with significant costs. Indonesian police designates a crime scene: Burned peatland and forest remains, planted with oil palm seedlings, near the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Sanctuary west of Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan.

The real victims of the palm oil industry are orangutans Many people are lured to Indonesia and Malaysia because of the palm oil industry. But the good news is that we can produce palm oil sustainably - protecting species like the orangutan - if we ensure that it is deforestation free. This means planting on already degraded land rather than replacing jungle with oil palm. Palm oil is made from the fruits of trees called African oil palms. Issue: Summer 2015 Tweet; Tell a Friend; It’s hard to look at the lines crisscrossing an orangutan’s open palm without thinking of the human equivalent. One of the animals most affected by this habitat loss is the orangutan. WATCH: Orangutan refuses to leave its tree, attempts to stop bulldozer with its bare hands “We have not removed palm oil from our own label food as ‘a marketing gimmick’, but to raise public awareness of the continuing destruction of the rainforest,” Iceland managing director Richard Walker said in an email to Bloomberg News. Cutting down pristine rainforest to make more palm oil is incredibly unsustainable and releases lots of carbon into the atmosphere. In the last 60 years, the rainforest of South-east Asia has disappeared at an alarming rate, and so has the orangutan numbers in the wild. Borneo has lost almost 40% of its forest in the last 10 years to Palm oil. They are mainly arboreal species using their super long arms to move between branches. Orangutans are also known as 'gardeners of the rainforest' since they help with seed dispersal through consuming a wide variety of fruits and moving between trees. But orangutans … The most recent public maps, several years old, do not indicate that any oil palm concession has been granted in this area.