Most people associate palm trees to cruising down the sunset strip in Vegas or to a hot summer’s day in the tropics; but what they don’t know is that palm trees are actively showing up in their lives throughout the course of a normal day.
This is because palm oils are used in many foods like McDonalds; but palm oils are not only used in our food but can also be found in Neutrogena, Revlon and Urban Decay Products.
Ok so what we have an excessive demand for palm oil?
The majority of the palm oil that is imported in to the west comes from Indonesian – mainly from the regions of Sumatra and Borneo. These areas are heavily populated by the estimated 60,000 remaining orangutans in the wild; the orangutans live in fertile low land areas that are close to riverbeds –the same areas that are favoured for palm plantations. In accordance with the World Wildlife Foundation the reason for the rapid development of these areas is due to the sudden increased western demand for palm oil and the increased value for the commodity.
Along with the introduction of plantations and the destruction of the habitats of these animals there is also been an increase in animal trafficking in the past decade.
The trafficking of baby orangutans and poaching of full grown orangutans is a devastating offense which - although is illegal in these areas - is being driven by the demand for palm oil.
Some plantation owners will blatantly shoot any orangutans that are found within their plantation because they are seen as “pests.” Often forest fires are set to orangutan habitats to quickly clear the land for plantations, these fires are destructive to not only the forests but they also take the lives of numerous slow-moving apes.
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