BROOKFIELD ZOO (Chicago) | Experts say rain forests cleared for popular product

October 19, 2007
BY ANDREW HERRMANN Staff Reporter

Studies conflict on the health benefits of palm oil, but experts meeting at the Brookfield Zoo said Thursday it’s bad for one species: orangutans.

The animals’ natural habitats, island rain forests in Southeast Asia, are being cleared in order to harvest the wood and make land available for palm oil production.

Palm oil — used in foods such as crackers, frozen dinners and popcorn, as well as some cosmetics — is high in saturated fat but has been touted as low in trans fat.

An estimated one in 10 supermarket products contains palm oil, and now there is a growing demand for the product for use in biofuels.

Rather than advising boycotts of products using palm oil, the experts meeting at the zoo touted firms that use the oil produced on environmentally sensitive plantations.

The world’s largest tree-dwelling mammals, orangutans are currently found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

Ian Singleton of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program estimated there are only about 6,700 in Sumatra and 55,000 in Borneo — down from 83,000 and 230,000 respectively a century ago.

Orangutan males stand more than 5 feet tall and weigh more than 200 pounds. They use extra-long arms, which can measure 6 feet, and hook-like feet to move from tree to tree.

Finding those trees can be a problem.

Orangutans have lost about 80 percent of their habitat in the last 20 years, and some researchers believe that orangutans in the wild may face extinction in as little as a decade.

Serge Wich, an orangutan researcher from Sumatra and the keynote speaker at the Brookfield gathering, which drew more than 100 experts from around the world, complained of “cowboy operators” in Indonesia who unconsciously clear-cut forests to feed the exploding market for palm oil, which is made from the palm tree’s seeds and fruit.

Urging consumers to use “sustainable yield brands,” produced by firms that are careful in plantation operations, Brookfield Zoo conservation biologist Robert Lacy noted, “Orangutans can’t do a very job speaking for themselves.”

Forest-friendly brands
The Orangutan Conservancy touts these “sustainable yield brands” that use oil from environmentally sensitive operations:

FOOD
ACT II
Amora
Banquet
Becel
Bertolli
Birds Eye
Blue Band
Butterball
Cadbury
Schweppes
Chef Boyardee
ConAgra
Country Crock
Egg Beaters
Ferrero
Healthy Choice
Hebrew National
Hellmann’s
Hunt’s
Keebler
Kellogg’s
Knorr
Lipton
Newman’s Own Organics
Orville
PAM
Peter Pan
Ready Crisp
ReddiWip
Slim Jom
Slim-Fast
Snack Pack
Spectrum Organica
Swiss Miss
Van Camp’s
Wesson
Wish Bone
PERSONAL CARE
AXE
Dove
Pond’s
Signal
Sunsilk
The Body Shop
Unilever
Vaseline

Photo information:
A pair of Orangutans at the Brookfield Zoo. (By Rich Hein/Sun-Times)

Source: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/610831,CST-NWS-orangutan19.article#

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Palm Oil & Deforestation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.