Palm oil in Indonesia

300 football fields’ worth of Indonesian rainforest are destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations every single hour. Between 1990 and 2005, more than 28 million hectares of rainforest were lost due to palm oil production and illegal logging. On the island of Sumatra alone, some 10.8 million hectares of forest have been converted into palm oil plantations … and this has had a devastating impact on the wild animals who once called these forests home. Orangutans are shot on sight if they happen to wander onto a palm plantation, while pygmy elephants, Sumatran tigers, and Sumatran rhinos (to name a few) are also being pushed toward the brink of extinction as a result of the palm oil industry’s relentless demand for land. No doubt about it: commercial palm oil production has spelled disaster for these animal species.