Deforestation in Indonesia | Be a Seed for Change

Gemma Tillack, Rainforest Action Network

Help spread the word about palm oil’s destructive impact on Indonesia’s rainforests—and how we can stop it!

We’ve been writing to you about the deforestation in Indonesia caused by palm oil production for years now. But you might still be connected to the problem and not even know it.
Palm oil is in roughly half of all the products on your grocery store shelves, including many of the most popular snack foods. Cookies, crackers, ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate bars… You get the point. Palm oil is difficult to avoid, especially if you don’t even know what to look for.
How can you find out if palm oil is an ingredient in your favorite snack? Why are rainforests being cut down for palm oil in the first place? And what can you do about it? Everything you need to know is in this blog post, which you can easily share with your friends and family!
To stop a problem as large as the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil, though, it’s not enough to arm ourselves with the facts. We need to spread the word as far and wide as possible. Everyone needs to know their connection to rainforest destruction and how they can be part of the solution.
Is your favorite snack food contributing to rainforest destruction? Get the facts. Then share them.
If you look for “palm oil” in the ingredients list of your favorite snack food, you may not find it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Palm oil often gets listed as something seemingly harmless (though generally with more syllables than real food), like Ascorbyl Palmitate or Palm Kernel Stearin .
We put together all the information you need about palm oil’s destructive impact on the rainforests of Indonesia, and outlined ways you can take action to break the link between America‘s favorite snack foods and rainforest destruction. Arm yourself—and your friends and family—with the facts now.

		For the forests,
		Gemma Tillack Senior Agribusiness Campaigner

Click on the photo above for even more info

Extinction doesn’t get a second chance.

Endangered orangutans are hovering on the very edge of extinction. Palm oil companies have deforested so much of the forests orangutans depend on for survival, they literally have nowhere left to go.
Mankind’s closest relative urgently needs our help.
Wild orangutans are nearly extinct and need us to take a stand. You can help this important work by chipping in just $10 today.
The footage below, which I filmed in Borneo, shows a pregnant orangutan trapped inside an area of active palm oil development on the border of Tanjng Puting National Park. Because orangutans cannot swim, she cannot reach the protected lands on the other side of this river, condemning her to inevitable death by starvation or at the hands of plantation workers.

Watching her broke my heart.

Palm oil companies prioritize profit over life. Horrific scenes like the one captured above must come to an end.

RAN is pushing big industry buyers like Cargill to take responsibility for the very real impacts of their supply chains, their role in land conflicts affecting Indigenous communities, and the role palm oil is playing in species extinction.
By donating just $10 today, you are joining with hundreds of other donors to make sure that we are saving orangutans, like the one above, from extinction.
Deforestation in Indonesia has reached crisis proportions — but a narrow window of time remains to stop this historic tragedy before it is too late. During the past decade orangutan populations have decreased by about 50% in the wild. This means that without drastic intervention, orangutans may soon be extinct as biologically viable populations in the wild.

RAN is working hard to pressure the Indonesian government and palm oil industry giants like Cargill to end this tragedy once and for all.

Please be generous. Extinct orangutans don’t get a second chance.