Can going green destroy a species?
Using palm oil as an alternative fuel is driving the orangutans of Borneo to extinction. These beautiful animals only live in the wild on Sumatra and Borneo now and their forest is being destroyed to plant palm trees to collect the oil, then the displaced orangutans are being killed by the famers to prevent them eating palm shoots. They consider them to be a pest.
5,000 square m of forest per year is lost. Palm oil is used in biofues and in about 10% of supermarket products. Anything that is called “saturated” fats is likely to contain palm oil.
These are very close relatives of ours with a 97% similarity in the DNA between orangutans and humans. I went to a function at the Zoo recently which was held near the orang-utan enclosure and while the humans partied and drank cheerily on one side of the glass, the orang-utans sat and watched and scratched their heads. I thought they looked wiser than some on my side of the glass.
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