UGH! Palm Oil Is Now Threatening Apes in Africa, Too…

In nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia where palm oil plantations are rapidly taking over areas that were once diverse rainforest ecosystems, the devastating effects of this industry have been well recorded.

With expanses of rainforest equivalent to around 300 football fields being cleared each hour to create space for more oil palm crops to be grown, populations of critically endangered animals such as orangutans are plummeting. In the last 20 years alone, The Orangutan Conservancy estimates that the world’s last remaining orangutans have lost 80 percent of their habitat. And over the past decade, the number of orangutans found in Malaysia and Indonesia has been cut in half, largely due to deforestation linked to palm oil production.

Now, with the lucrative industry set to expand throughout Africa, scientists worry that primates here may also be in grave danger. According to a study recently published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Africa’s monkeys will most likely struggle to survive if palm oil production comes to the continent. This fear is only logical considering the equatorial forested land that would need to be cleared for palm oil cultivation is also coincidentally the only suitable home for African primates.

This is the absolute last thing that should be happening if Africa’s primates are to have any chance at survival, as they are already seriously threatened even without large-scale palm oil production taking place on the continent.

Thanks to other human activities such as logging, mining, and poaching, 37 percent of mainland primate species and 87 percent of species in Madagascar are already on the verge of extinction. Sadly, if the palm oil industry spreads to Africa and the precious forest habitats of the continent’s primates are destroyed, the fate of these monkeys will surely be even bleaker.

With the majority of palm oil producers blatantly refusing to put protecting rare primates and other precious creatures ahead of their own profits, it’s up to us to take a stand against palm oil. The demand for this habitat-destroying oil has doubled in the past decade and is projected to double yet again by 2050, in which case the industry will unquestionably need to come to Africa in order to fulfill this high demand. However, there’s still time to prevent this from happening if we start acting right now.

By opting to skip products that contain palm oil and its derivatives, you can help bring down demand for this animal-threatening oil and, in turn, help keep primates from disappearing from our planet for good. To learn about which consumer goods palm oil can be found in so that you know which ones to avoid, click here!

Image Source: Pixabay