LOOK: Orangutan Clings to Last Tree of Forest Destroyed by the Palm Oil Industry

As you are reading this, rainforests are being cleared at a rate of six football fields per minute (Palm Oil Fact Sheet, Red Apes), to produce cheap palm oil. But this comes at a deadly cost. The Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra are the only remaining habitats on this earth where orangutans live but they account for nearly 50% of all palm oil plantations (World Wildlife Fund). As more rainforest continues to be lost to palm oil plantations the orangutans are dying out with them. When man’s closest living relative who shares 97% of our DNA is gone, something of us will be lost forever too.

If you need one image to convey how badly orangutans are being impacted by palm oil plantations, this is it. It features a petrified, starving, and desperate orangutan clinging defiantly to the last tree standing in her forest in Borneo before it is completely destroyed and turned into a palm oil plantation.

To learn more about this story and see more pictures, read the piece in the Daily Mail.