Kicking Your Head to Get Rid of a Headache: Palm Oil and the Orangutan

Borneo~Homeless, semi-paralyzed and blind in one eye, Montana faces an uncertain future. Even if his friends find somewhere for him to live, the 15-year-old has been weakened by years in assisted care. The lethal dangers of readjustment in his natural home include men like those who shot him out of a tree when he was a baby. But for the source of the greatest threat to Montana’s existence, say his supporters, look no further than your food cupboard.

The orangutan, the largest tree-living mammal on the planet, is in crisis.
Once a mighty orange army of 300,000 that swung through the dense forests of South East Asia, conservationists say the population has dwindled to fewer than 25,000 concentrated on the two Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. There, they cling precariously to existence on government-protected nature reserves under siege by developers of one of the world’s most lucrative commodities: palm oil.

Illegal logging, fires and clearances have decimated the tropical rainforest that is the exclusive home of the primates. A care centre near Pangkalan Bun in Central Borneo is crowded with over 320 homeless, orphaned and sick or injured orangutans, a number that grows by 20 percent a year, say the workers there. Montana peers unhappily from his cage; unlike 250 of his predecessors who have been relocated to the jungle upriver from here since this centre was set up in 1998, he is unlikely to ever leave.

“We just can’t find homes for all of them,” laments Birute Galdikas, the famed anthropologist who runs the care facility, after producing a long list of daily needs that includes nappies for the three dozen or so baby orangutans. “We are looking at the extinction of orangutans…in the wild.”

She estimates that without action, the primates – one of the four great apes along with gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, have perhaps 15 years left. The Borneo orangutan is listed as “highly endangered” by the International Conservation Union, one short stop on the ladder of extinction above its Sumatran cousin, which is critically endangered. “When it goes extinct, it will be a terrible loss,” says Dr. Galdikas. “I can’t tell you how urgent it is.”

[…]

Cheap and carbon neutral, palm-oil diesel was until recently hailed as a safe, renewable alternative to petroleum, but such claims have been undermined by a series of recent studies. One by Wageningen University in Holland, published earlier this year, found that the carbon released from peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia, drained and burned to plant palm oil trees, released 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere, or 8 percent of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.

“It is like kicking your head to get rid of a headache,” says Galdikas. “The palm oil prices are going through the roof because of their use as bio-fuel and this, one of the poorest countries in the world, is cutting down its trees to supply the market. It makes no sense.”

Scientists say the global warming caused by the release of this carbon is drying the forest floor, making it easier to burn and adding to the devastation caused by fires. To that double whammy — releasing vast quantities of carbon into the air while destroying the forests that suck it up – add another: the permanent, irreversible loss of countless animals. But demand for palm oil continues to rise. A $48 million palm-oil bio-diesel plant opened in Australia’s Northern Territories last year and three 50 megawatt power stations are planned in Holland. One of the plants, which will use 95-percent palm oil, has already been approved.

Japan Focus