In the forest29 January 2006
One afternoon, a few weeks ago, I stood in a clearing in a forest in the heart of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The equatorial sun shone through gaps in the tree canopy above us, creating a patchwork of light and dark on the forest floor. Our guide put a hand to his lips, warning us not to make a sound.
We waited three, four, five minutes, while a wild boar rooted around in the nearby brush and mosquitoes homed in unerringly on unprotected expanses of skin. Then we heard it: the low, haunting call of the male orang-utan.
I gazed up into the trees, trying to see where the sound was coming from. The forest seemed dark, impenetrable. Suddenly, high up in the canopy, I saw the branches move and, as the sun pierced the foliage, I caught a glimpse of a distant red-gold shape, heading our way.
There was movement to the left and right as well, as other orang-utans swung by. There must have been 10 or 20 animals altogether, and for two hours that afternoon we were privileged to be able to watch them go about their extraordinary business.
The five great apes
Aside from humans, there are four types of great ape in the world: gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo and orang-utan. I have seen them all in their natural habitat. For my money, the orang-utan, with its strength and subtlety, its luminous intelligence and, above all, its glorious russet beauty, must come at the top of the list.
How can it be, I asked myself, as I stood there in that forest clearing, that the human race, in its greed and vanity, is driving this magnificent creature to the edge of extinction?
Once the number of orang-utans in south-east Asia could have been in the hundreds of thousands. Today, fewer than 60,000 orang-utans remain in the wild, and these are found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they are classified as "endangered'' and "critically endangered''.
An estimated 5,000 of them are lost from the wild every year. You don't have to be a genius to work out that the orang-utan could be extinct within the next 12 years.
Image: © David Birkin
Who's to blame?
The most shattering aspect of this story is that a finger of blame can be pointed unerringly at food manufacturers and supermarkets in Britain and the products that they make and sell, and that we buy. Let's be clear about this.
The biggest single threat to the orang-utan is the destruction of its forest habitat, and the most important reason for the destruction of the forest has been the spread of palm-oil plantations in Borneo and Sumatra .
Palm oil is a nightmare for ethically-aware shoppers who are trying to do their bit for the environment. It is often labelled as "vegetable oil'', which makes it almost impossible to avoid.
To make matters worse, it is everywhere: as many as one in 10 products sold in Britain's supermarkets - including margarine, ice cream, pastry, chocolate, crisps and chips - contains palm oil. It is also found in beauty products such as mascara and body wash.
Increased use
More worryingly, between 1995 and 2002 there was a 90% increase in the use of palm oil in the European Union.
The EU imported more than 3.8 million tonnes, accounting for 17% of the global trade. Almost a quarter of that comes to the UK , which is the second biggest importer of palm oil in Europe after the Netherlands.
At least 100 UK companies either import or buy palm oil. These include producers of cakes and pastry, such as Allied Bakeries; of sugar confectionery, such as Cadbury Schweppes and Nestlé; of snacks, crisps and chips, such as United Biscuits and Walkers Snack Foods.
Most important of all are the UK supermarkets. These are the major end-users of palm-oil, Tesco chief among them.
Tesco products that have contained palm oil
(Image: © Friends of the Earth)
(Image: © Friends of the Earth)
© David Birkin
