Outrage as palm oil companies exterminate hundreds of orang-utans

[G_j]

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/322150


Op-Ed: Outrage as palm oil companies exterminate hundreds of orang-utans
ElizabethBy Elizabeth Batt
Mar 31, 2012


Banda Aceh - Devastating fires deliberately set by palm oil companies in Indonesia may have killed hundreds of Sumatran orang-utans. And the land grab means the creatures may have only weeks or a few months, before disappearing forever.

The fires are the latest move in a sickening and gut-wrenching war waged on orang-utans by palm oil companies over land in northern Indonesia, says the UK's Daily Mail.

Hundreds of the arboreal great apes, recognized by their reddish-brown hair and uniquely expressive faces, may have perished in the fires allegedly started by palm oil companies in the Tripa forest on the coast of Aceh province. It is one of the largest remaining populations of wild orangutans in the world.

More devastating, are the reported claims of palm oil employees forcing fleeing orang-utans back into the burning forest, to their deaths. An action, said Ian Singleton of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, that has cost the apes dearly. He told The Mail:

"It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears."


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/322150#ixzz1sJndiLvT

[arcane1]

1. All for freakin' palm oil

[G_j]

2. Where is the global outrage? Where is the government of Indonesia? nt

[arcane1]

5. Thank you for getting the word out!

I'm going to do the same. The outrage begins HERE!

[Octafish]

16. +1

All the intelligent creatures will be gone before man wises up.

[G_j]

24. thank you

I know how much there is to be outraged about. It's hard not to become fatigued. It's a life and death situation for these primates.

[Hubert Flottz]

20. Owned by big international chemical companies like Dow...

It's where a lot of American jobs fled to.

[Mojorabbit]

23. They have a massively corrupt govt. nt

[BudT]

3. The human condition

I guess if money can be made someone will find an excuse to do what needs to be done. Unless laws are in place to prevent it. And even then . . .

[bbgrunt]

4. this is sickening.....orangutan in malay means man of the jungle.

[mimitabby]

6. oh this is horrible

[freshwest]

7. As well as the taking of the palm oil itself. It's stupid and wasteful. Don't buy anything with it.

And as far as the government allowing it, the corporations have bought them out. This is all anti-life.

[TrogL]

10. I'm allergic to it. You wouldn't believe all the stuff it's in

I first found out about it when I had horrible reactions to store-bought muffins.

[freshwest]

12. Sorry you got sick. Most store/restaurant food makes me sick now. Got to cook from scratch now.

[young_at_heart]

8. How do these "people" live with themselves?

There is too much evil in the world!

[rurallib]

9. just sickening.

[kenny blankenship]

11. Avoid "environmentally friendly" cleaning products

Most of these are based on palm oil, I have discovered.
I fell for the green "eco" marketing some years back, not knowing that what I was really backing with my money was this:

ECOCIDE
it used to be jungle, orangutan habitat, but was slashed and burned to raise palm trees for oil.
Here is the top of the ingredient list for Seventh Generation Dish Detergent:

Aqua (water), sodium lauryl sulfate and caprylyl/myristyl glucoside (plant-derived cleaning agents)

I mention that brand only because they are typical and widely distributed.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about that main ingredient sodium lauryl sulfate:

Being derived from inexpensive coconut and palm oils, it is a common component of many domestic cleaning products.

here is the packaging of the typical "environmentally friendly" cleaning product:


White bottle to indicate purity and innocence! Green leaf background, blue sky with cloud. You mean I can PURCHASE my way to a clean conscience and at the same time choose balance with nature as a lifestyle option??? OH THANK YOU! Thank You Global Capitalism! The bottle should have a field of blackened stumps with an incinerated orangutan carcass on its label instead.

Nestlé foods is also a major purchaser of plantation raised palm oil. Another class of product to avoid and examine skeptically.

Obviously, individual consumers cannot stop the final destruction of Indonesian rain forest and orang habitat. Only pressure from many countries' governments on the government of Indonesia can stop that. But we can pressure our government to take action. We will have to grab their attention when they have a free moment in between waging their wars for pipeline routes and signing more unrestricted global trade treaties.

[Smilo]

17. So sickening - I will not be buying 7th generation again. n/t

[chervilant]

19. Nestlé, Mars and

Hershey's buy cacao from countries where children are routinely enslaved to harvest the beans, under harsh and often deadly conditions. Please boycott these companies, and refuse to buy any products from any subsidiaries.

[G_j]

31. From the Seventh Generation website,

Last edited Mon Apr 23, 2012, 11:52 AM - Edit history (2)

this is three yrs. old, I'm not sure what to think exactly, the comments are interesting also..

http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/blog/seventh-generation-takes-lead-palm-oil-credits

Fri, Mar. 13, 2009
Sustainability.Seventh Generation Takes the Lead in Sustainable Palm Oil Credits

In our ongoing quest to make our products the most sustainable and natural cleaning products available, we are continually working up and down our supply chain to ensure that the ingredients in every bottle of Seventh Generation are not just less bad for people and the planet, but are truly good.

That’s why we are pleased to be the first consumer packaged goods company in North America to tackle the issue of destructive palm oil production and its effect on tropical rainforests. Seventh Generation is now the first company in our industry to purchase sustainable palm kernel oil production credits to cover our company’s use across our entire cleaning product portfolio. We are paying a premium to producers of sustainable palm in order to support their work and to expand the market for greener palm oil production. The purchase of sustainable palm kernel oil credits is only the first step in a broader strategy that will culminate in sourcing a segregated supply of palm kernel oil for our exclusive product use. Currently, the infrastructure needed to supply Seventh Generation with adequate levels of sustainable palm oil simply does not exist, so we have purchased credits as an interim measure while we work diligently to achieve our sustainable sourcing goal.

So, what is palm oil? And why should I care? And what does palm oil have to do with cleaning products? Well, the little-known truth is that more than 50% of the products on your local grocery store shelf contain palm oil. In fact, most cleaning products use palm kernel oil in the production of surfactants. Surfactants are the active ingredient in many cleaning products; they are used in Seventh Generation laundry detergents, hand dishwashing liquid and spray cleaners.

The ugly side of growing palm is that, in order to make way for large-scale plantations, vast tracks of old growth rainforest in places like Indonesia and Malaysia have been clear cut. As the global demand for palm oil skyrocketed over the last 20 years (with an almost six fold increase in production), deforestation has continued on an epic scale. It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.

Scientists refer to tropical forests as the lungs of our planet. We pump out ever increasing quantities of CO2 -- the most prevalent global warming causing greenhouse gas -- and our tropical forests act like giant planet scrubbers, sucking C02 out of the atmosphere and locking it away deep inside the forests. As more and more rainforests are clearcut to make room for palm oil plantations, the deforestation releases vast quantities of CO2 that have been locked away in the forests for centuries, significantly adding to the growing global warming threat. Indonesia (about 1/5 the size of the US or China) has now become the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only the United States and China. Indonesia’s place as one of the top three greenhouse gas emitters on the planet is driven exclusively by deforestation, not industrialization (which drives emissions in China and the United States). The problem has become so acute that 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation, more than all emissions from the transportation sector.

In addition to being a climate change time bomb, tropical deforestation also deprives some of the world’s most endangered species (such as orangutans, elephants, and tigers) of their key habitats. As habitats are lost to palm oil production and without immediate intervention, these species face almost certain extinction. Without a change in forest practices in Indonesia and Malaysia, it is likely that orangutans will disappear in the next five years.

By supporting sustainable palm oil production, we can change all of this. We can stop the rapid conversion of tropical rainforest and peatlands to palm oil plantations. We can ensure that the critical habitat for some of the world’s most threatened species remain in tact, and we can take part in ensuring that the indigenous people of the rainforest are not driven from their land.

Please stay in touch for more about how you can join us in leading the effort to protect tropical rainforests and their inhabitants, while helping to slow global climate change. Together, we can be a catalyst for the change we want to see in the world, helping to protect our planet for the next seven generations and beyond.

[joeybee12]

13. Absolutely sickening...knr

[Meiko]

14. Terrible

Here is a list of who's using the stuff in metric tons.


http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=palm-oil&graph=imports

1 India 7,250.00
2 China 6,300.00
3 EU-27 5,300.00
4 Pakistan 2,150.00
5 Other 1,725.00
6 Malaysia 1,710.00
7 Egypt 1,350.00
8 United States 1,089.00
9 Bangladesh 975.00
10 Singapore 700.00
11 Japan 585.00
12 Viet Nam 580.00
13 Russian Federation 560.00
14 United Arab Emirates 520.00
15 Kenya 500.00
16 Iran, Islamic Republic Of 500.00
17 Nigeria 440.00
18 Turkey 440.00
19 Myanmar 400.00
20 Benin 400.00
21 Mexico 385.00
22 South Africa 380.00
23 Saudi Arabia 290.00
24 Korea, Republic Of 288.00
25 Tanzania, United Republic Of 240.00
26 Ethiopia 225.00
27 Iraq 215.00
28 Brazil 215.00
29 Taiwan, Province Of China 160.00
30 Sri Lanka 150.00
31 Ghana 150.00
32 Oman 130.00
33 Yemen 130.00
34 Angola 125.00
35 Colombia 115.00
36 Australia 110.00
37 Afghanistan 95.00
38 Togo 83.00
39 Congo, The Democratic Republic Of The 80.00
40 Côte D'ivoire 75.00
41 Canada 75.00
42 El Salvador 75.00
43 Mozambique 75.00
44 Sudan 70.00
45 Venezuela 70.00
46 Algeria 70.00
47 Haiti 55.00
48 Kuwait 52.00
49 Jordan 50.00
50 Cameroon 43.00
51 Philippines 40.00
52 Peru 37.00
53 Guinea 37.00
54 Indonesia 35.00
55 Switzerland 35.00
56 Thailand 35.00
57 Dominican Republic 25.00
58 Guatemala 25.00
59 Costa Rica 20.00
60 Liberia 19.00
61 Rwanda 18.00
62 New Zealand 18.00
63 Zimbabwe 17.00
64 Ecuador 15.00
65 Hong Kong 14.00
66 Sierra Leone 12.00
67 Honduras 10.00
68 Norway 9.00
69 Papua New Guinea 4.00
70 Korea, Democratic People's Republic Of 1.00
71 EU-25 0.00

[hunter]

22. That's the difficult thing...

... there are seven ranking consumers above the U.S.A...

How do we convince people worldwide that an expansion of the palm oil industry is a bad thing?

It's not like the U.S.A. has any high moral standing. We export death to people who are not orangutans.

wikipedia

[The2ndWheel]

15. Taxes aren't the only price paid for civilization

[MoonRiver]

18. God damn bastards!

[Kablooie]

21. They are an endangered species even before this!

[G_j]

26. true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan

"Both orangutan species are considered to be Endangered with the Sumatran orangutan being Critically Endangered. Human activities have decimated the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction and the illegal pet trade. There are several conservation and rehabilitation organisations dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild."

http://www.allaboutwildlife.com/2009-08/orangutans-losing-rainforest-habitat/1324

Today’s Top 10 Endangered Species News
Over at Mongabay.com, Rhett Butler has a terrific — though somewhat disheartening — piece about orphaned orangutans, habitat loss and industrial greed.

Orangutans, which are found only on the islands of Borneo (shared by Indonesia and Malaysia), and Sumatra (in Indonesia), are large, solitary apes that need expanses of rainforest habitat in order to survive. During the past few decades orangutans have lost a great deal of habitat due to logging in the rainforests. But a relatively new threat, the cultivation of vast tracts of oil-palm trees, which are used chiefly to produce cooking oils, has greatly accelerated rainforest destruction. Palm oil is one of the two most commonly produced edible oils, second only to soybean oil. In tropical areas across the world, including in South America and Asia, native forest is rapidly being cut in order to convert land to the cultivation of oil palms, which are native to Africa.

Many orangutans in the new Indonesian agricultural areas — by many accounts over 1,000 per year — are killed by humans who see them as pests. Others are injured or orphaned in conflicts with humans, and some of these animals end up in rehabilitation facilities run by conservationists. The goal of these survival centers is to prepare orangutans for eventual return to the wild. However, those wild areas are now vanishing at such a terrific rate that finding suitable habitat for all the orangutans that are ready to go back to the rainforest is becoming increasingly difficult — and soon it may be virtually impossible.

The orangutan is on virtually every international top ten endangered animals list, with perhaps as few as 50,000 remaining in the wild. The Borneo subspecies is by far the more numerous, as only around 7,000 of the Sumatran subspecies remain in the wild.

Butler has been following the palm-oil issue for years, and has published many excellent articles on the subject. To view them, visit Mongabay.com. And to go directly to his recent article on rainforest destruction and orphaned orangutans, click here.

..more..

[CrispyQ]

25. Our species behaves inhumanely & yet there are those who think we have souls & animals don't.

I'm sorry you had to 'share' the planet with us, you beautiful creatures, because we don't share.

[G_j]

27. Orangutans have large brains and are considered to be highly intelligent.

Documented tool use among orangutans includes fashioning crude “hats” out of leaves for rain protection, as well as building a roof of leaves over their bed nests to keep the rain out.

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/great_apes/orangutans/

http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?activity_id=3817

http://www.allaboutwildlife.com/endangered-rainforest-species-orangutans

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[LeftishBrit]

28. That's awful

They are an endangered species anyway.

I don't generally trust the Daily Mail; but this story sounds as though it probably originated from a reliable source.

This sort of thing has been reported from some time; e.g. see this:

http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem12129.html

Those who are horrified by such things, and have any money to spare, might consider a donation to the World Wildlife Fund.

[G_j]

29. +1

[SemperEadem]

30. Jiff, Skippy and Smuckers all use palm oil in their 'natural' peanut butter

it's the 2nd or 3rd ingredient, depending on whose brand it is. I will never buy anything from those companies any more until they stop using palm oil in their product.

[G_j]

32. Knowledge Is Your Weapon: say NO to palm oil!

[IMG][/IMG]