A Wildlife Article from All-Creatures.org

Palm Oil in Common Household Products Is Destroying the World's 'Orangutan Capital'

From Laurel Sutherlin, Earth / Food / Life: A project of Independent Media Institute
September 2024

Tragically, our investigations exposed major global brands—including Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, and Nissin Foods—sourcing illegal palm oil grown within the nationally protected Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve. In September 2022, we published the Carbon Bomb Scandals report, showing that the same brands were still sourcing illegal palm oil from the reserve.

Buyer beware: Illegal deforestation to make room for palm oil plantations in Sumatra is destroying critical habitat for endangered orangutans. The oil is used in 50 percent of all consumer goods, from lipstick and packaged food to body lotion, biofuels, and snack foods. (Photo: Laurel Sutherlin)

Introduction: The Leuser Ecosystem

Picture a rhinoceros in the rainforest. Add a herd of elephants, families of orangutans swinging through the treetops, and tigers prowling the understory, and there is only one place in the world you could be.

Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem is one of Earth’s most ancient forest ecosystems, a laboratory of life’s potential where the alchemy of evolution has been allowed to experiment uninterrupted for millennia. And the results are astounding. Green upon green, vines hanging from towering old-growth trees, moss growing on ferns and bromeliads… you get the picture.

It is the kind of place one imagines primeval nature to be: wild, abundant, and impenetrable. The Leuser Ecosystem is considered the heart of Southeast Asia’s rainforest region, which, alongside the Amazon in South America and the Congo Basin in Africa, is one of only three tropical forest regions on Earth.

The beating heart of the Leuser is the lowland forests and peat swamps of the Singkil-Bengkung region. This area is part of western Sumatra’s last healthy peat swamp ecosystem. This lush jungle contains some of the world’s richest levels of biological diversity.

The lowland peat forests of the Leuser Ecosystem deserve the highest levels of protection for multiple critical reasons. Dubbed the “orangutan capital of the world,” this region has the highest population density of critically endangered Sumatran orangutans anywhere. This includes a unique, culturally distinct subpopulation of a few thousand individuals in the Singkil-Bengkung region. These subpopulations demonstrate social structures and tool-using behaviors distinct from all other orangutan populations. These forests are also home to some of the healthiest remaining breeding populations of highly imperiled Sumatran elephants, rhinos, and tigers.

Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE, including:

• Cycle of Destruction
• Undercover Field Investigations
• Some Progress, but More Is Needed

Bornean orangutan (Pongo_pygmaeus), Tanjung Putting National Park

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: September 7, 2024
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