Things That Make You Go Green

Remember my posts on palm oil awhile back? (here and here) Well, it turns out that deforestation due to the ever-expanding palm oil industry is causing the remaining 30,000 or so orangutans in Malaysia and Indonesia to lose their habitats…and die.

It’s estimated that orangutans will go extinct in 3 to 20 years. THREE YEARS? Come on people! Give me a f-ing break. Are we seriously going to let this happen?

From Plenty Magazine, here’s a really sad quote to put some perspective into what’s happening:

Hardi Baktiantoro from the the Centre for Orangutan Protection in Indonesia says,

“I find dead orangutans, they have starved to death. There is no food, no water,” he said. He tells me that on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan (formerly Borneo), more than ten orangutans are starving to death each day because of palm-oil driven deforestation. “The situation for orangutans today is very, very critical. The experts say the orangutans will be extinct in 2015. The orangutans will be extinct in next three years unless the government takes extreme action to save them. But instead they are planning convert 455,000 hectares of forest [in Kalimantan] into new plantations, mostly palm oil,” he said.

The workers on those plantations see orangutans as nuisances that trample and eat their crops. “The plantation workers have to protect the oil-palms. That is their job. To them the orangutan who is hunting for food is only a pest,” said Baktiantoro, clicking through slides on his laptop of orangutans whose fingers and hands have been mutilated by plantation workers, and others chained to workers’ dormitories.

This is just really, really sad. And totally shameful and egregious that we are letting this happen.