Orangutans are considered as pests by the palm oil industry
Orangutans
are some of our closest relatives, sharing approximately 97% of their
DNA with humans. Orangutan means 'Person of the jungle' in the
Indonesian language. It is estimated that 6 to 12 of these 'jungle
people' are killed each day for palm oil. These gentle creatures are
either killed in the deforestation process, when they wonder into a palm
oil plantation looking for food, or in the illegal pet trade after
they've been captured and kept as pets in extremely poor conditions and
provided with extremely poor nutrition.
Orangutans are
considered as pests by the palm oil industry. In the deforestation
process, workers are told that if wildlife gets in the way, they are to
do whatever is necessary in order to dispose them, no matter how
inhumane. Often orangutans are run over by logging machinery, beat to
death, buried alive or set on fire... all in the name of palm oil.
Did you know that each and everyone of us is fueling one of the world's
biggest ecological disasters and acts of primate genocide in history?
Borneo and Sumatra are two of the most
bio-diverse regions of the world, yet they have the longest list of
endangered species. This list includes the magnificent orangutan. These
two South-East Asian islands are extremely rich in life, containing
around 20,000 flowering plant species, 3,000 tree species, 300,000
animal species and thousands more being discovered each year. Despite
this amazing biodiversity and delicate web of species, an area the size
of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour in Indonesia
and Malaysia to make way for the production of one vegetable oil. That's
6 football fields destroyed each minute. This vegetable oil is called
palm oil, and is found in hundreds of the everyday products, from baked
goods and confectionery, to cosmetics and cleaning agents... many of
which you buy in your weekly shopping.
Due to the massive international demand
for palm oil, palm oil plantations are rapidly replacing the rainforest
habitat of the critically endangered orangutan; with over 90% of their
habitat already destroyed in the last 20 years.
Orangutans are
some of our closest relatives, sharing approximately 97% of their DNA
with humans. Orangutan means 'Person of the jungle' in the Indonesian
language. It is estimated that 6 to 12 of these 'jungle people' are
killed each day for palm oil. These gentle creatures are either killed
in the deforestation process, when they wonder into a palm oil
plantation looking for food, or in the illegal pet trade after they've
been captured and kept as pets in extremely poor conditions and provided
with extremely poor nutrition.
Orangutans are considered as
pests by the palm oil industry. In the deforestation process, workers
are told that if wildlife gets in the way, they are to do whatever is
necessary in order to dispose them, no matter how inhumane. Often
orangutans are run over by logging machinery, beat to death, buried
alive or set on fire... all in the name of palm oil.
Government
data has shown that over 50,000 orangutans have already died as a
result of deforestation due to palm oil in the last two decades. Experts
say that if this pattern of destruction and exploitation continues,
these intelligent acrobats of the jungle will be extinct in the wild
within 3 to 12 years (as early as 2015). It is also thought that their
jungle habitat will be completely gone within 20 years (approximately
2033).
Around 50 million tons of palm oil is produced
annually; with almost all of that being non-sustainable palm oil, that
replaces 12 million hectares of dense, bio-diverse rainforest. That's
the equivalent landmass of North Korea deforested each year for palm oil
alone!
Palm oil is also having a shocking impact on our
planet. The production of this one vegetable oil is not only responsible
for polluting rivers and causing land erosion, but when the plantation
workers set fire to the remaining trees, shrubs and debris to make way
for the oil palms, it produces immense amount of smoke pollution that is
toxic to planet earth. This has been found to be the second biggest
contributor to greenhouse gas in the world.
By purchasing
products that contain crude palm oil, you are helping destroy ancient,
pristine rainforest, wipe out species like the orangutan, and create a
large-scale ecological disaster. Think of the consequences next time you
do your weekly shopping; the consequences not only for orangutans and
other animals, but for us as the human race; for we cannot survive
without the rainforests either. We have a choice, orangutans do not.
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