Palm Oil's Impact on Ecosystems

Plantations for Biofuel and Food Destroying Rainforests and Swamps

Jun 22, 2007 Dawn M. Smith

Endangered species are being pushed out as plantations take the place of rainforests. But studies show that palm oil is neither healthy nor environmentally sound.

Five endangered species-the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran rhino, Sumatran and Bornean orangutan and Asian elephants- live in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. But their habitat is being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. Concerns about trans-fats and health led food companies to look for other inexpensive sources of cooking oil. And the biofuel industry felt that palm oil, a carbon-neutral source of energy, would be a viable alternative to petroleum.

Palm Oil Plantations and Ecosystem Destruction

Unfortunately, what has actually resulted is that virgin rainforests and peat swamps being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. 600 million tons of carbon escapes into the air each year from the drained peat bogs. Add in soil erosion and sedimentation of rivers, herbicide and pesticide contamination, air pollution from the fires set to clear the land and you have an ecological disaster in the making. And that doesn’t take into account the effluent from the processing mills that spill into rivers causing the loss of fish and other aquatic life.

Palm Oil as a Health Risk

Palm oil is now a common substitute for the partially hydrogenated oils which are high in trans-fats. Unfortunately, although palm oil does not contain trans-fats, it actually has been proven to raise cholesterol levels and increase the incidence of cardiovascular disease.

Indonesian and Malayan Wildlife Affected

100 years ago nearly 90% of Indonesia was rainforest. Even 50 years ago, it was still around 77% forested. Today forests have been reduced to less than half largely due to logging and palm oil plantations. Tropical rainforests provide a home for 70% of the world’s plant and animal species. In Indonesia and Malaysia, they are the only home for endemic tigers, rhinos, elephants and orangutan. Because these species require large amounts of un-fragmented rainforest to survive, it will be critical to explore ways of preventing further palm oil plantation development which would further fragment the remaining forests on these islands.

A secondary result of the loss of habitat is that it forces the animals into areas of human settlement. Human-animal conflict usually results in the death of animals. In early 2003, Sumatran palm oil workers caught 7 tigers in Riau alone and in 2004 6 wild elephants were poisoned in Sumatra when they entered a palm oil plantation. Elephant attacks on human settlements doubled in Indonesia in just 6 years.

Everyone can do their part to prevent further loss of these important rainforests and peat swamps by simply avoiding palm oil products.

The copyright of the article Palm Oil's Impact on Ecosystems in Wildlife Preservation is owned by Dawn M. Smith. Permission to republish Palm Oil's Impact on Ecosystems in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Asian Elephant

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