The Malaysian government has announced it will give orangutans to its trading partners such as the EU, the USA and China, in return for buying large amounts pf palm oil <\/p>
The Malaysian government seems to have lost all sense of logic, says Mark Carwardine . It has just announced that it will give Critically Endangered orangutans as gifts to countries that buy large quantities of its palm oil<\/strong>.<\/p> That\u2019s like Britain promising to give a free badger<\/a> to anyone who destroys a badger sett. The lack of logic is jaw-dropping.<\/p> Malaysia\u2019s Plantations and Commodities Minister, Johari Abdul Ghani, claimed that giving orangutans <\/a>to trading partners such as the EU, the USA and China would \u201cprove to the global community that Malaysia is committed to biodiversity conservation\u201d. But maybe a better way of demonstrating a commitment to biodiversity conservation would be to commit to biodiversity<\/a> conservation (and to keep the orangutans in their natural habitat)?\u00a0<\/p> \u2018Palm oil\u2019 is rather like \u2018sub-prime mortgages\u2019 or \u2018saturated fat\u2019 \u2013 just hearing those words sends an automatic signal to the brain that says \u2018bad\u2019, though we\u2019re not entirely sure why. Put simply, the main reason orangutans and many other Critically Endangered species are hurtling towards extinction is primarily because, for decades, their rainforest homes have been bulldozed to make room for industrial-scale palm oil plantations by large companies in pursuit of massive profits at any environmental cost.\u00a0<\/p> Palm oil is a key ingredient in nearly half of all household products, from pizzas and chocolate to deodorant and toothpaste. It is also in great demand for so-called environmentally friendly biofuel (which is more than a little ironic given that clearing native forests for palm oil contributes up The scale of the problem is almost unimaginable. I\u2019ll never forget flying from Kota Kinabalu to Tawau, in Malaysian Borneo<\/a>, over a never-ending expanse of palm oil plantations. Vast swathes of what was once tropical rainforest had been cleared to make room for row upon row, mile upon mile, of identical palm trees. The orangutans and all the other native wildlife that once lived there had gone.\u00a0<\/p>