Every year, nearly two million acres of rainforest are converted into palm tree plantations in Indonesia — conversions that are taking place to meet an unrelenting demand for palm oil as a food additive in hundreds of U.S. products.

There are many issues surrounding the palm oil plantations, including the impact they’re having on native animals, the habitat that’s being destroyed and the cultural displacement that these plantations are causing.

Animals go extinct when their habitat changes so profoundly that they cannot adapt to their new microclimate. In Indonesia, when a section of rainforest is clear-cut to make way for a palm plantation, 40 different endangered mammals, thousands of species of locally occurring plants and many other animal species get displaced by the even rows of palm trees that suddenly crop up. This new monoculture creates a habitat unsuitable to the animals that used to live there.

Many starve in the overcrowded forest; others can’t find shelter from human predators. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the endangered orangutan population alone has declined more than 50 percent due to deforestation.

Human communities are also being hugely affected by these far-reaching changes. Before people started wide-scale clear-cutting, Malaysia and Indonesia were home to hundreds of tribes of indigenous peoples. Their knowledge of the rainforest and how to live in it was encyclopedic, and their acts of kindness helped many early explorers survive. Now they are fleeing to cities where they’re losing their cultural identities.

Another big problem with palm oil is the soil erosion caused by the removal of the rainforest cover and the planting of palm oil plantations. Soil erosion happens when clearing or other activity removes vegetation that holds soil with its roots and prevents direct erosion from rain by shading the ground with its branches during a rainstorm. Once the topsoil is eroded due to a palm oil plantation, it washes into the rivers and is carried into the ocean, where it smothers the most biologically diverse coral reef system in the world.

Palm oil is found in wide variety of everyday products, from fast foods to cosmetics, Oreos to Bisquick. It’s commonly found in candy, breakfast cereal, peanut butter, baked goods, soaps and ice cream. Palm oil is sometimes disguised by other names, including palm kernel oil, palmitic acid, stearic acid, Vitamin A palmitate and even, simply, vegetable oil.

Interestingly — and unfortunately — its use is growing, because it’s both cheaper than other oils and is seen as a good alternative to oils high in trans fats; as a result, many foods labeled as “natural” or “healthy” carry it.

Yet this ubiquitous ingredient is one of the most destructive and unsustainable food additives on the planet. The easiest way you can play a role in ending rainforest destruction starts in your own home. Stop buying palm oil. Or you can take it one step farther: Join thousands of others who are campaigning against the use of this destructive product by writing to companies that use palm oil and urging them to stop.

— Nathan Williams, 13, is a Family Link/McMurray Middle School student who is passionately interested in environmental issues.

Learn more

For more information on companies that use palm oil in their products, search the keyword “palm oil products” on the Internet. Also, visit the following Web sites to read more about palm oil, its use and its impact on the environment: palmoilaction.org or www.cspinet.org/palm/.