There is an ingredient in approximately half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets around the world. It is in your biscuits, your margarine, your shampoo, your lipstick, your instant noodles, and quite possibly your breakfast cereal. It is the world’s most widely consumed vegetable oil, produced on an industrial scale across the tropical forests of Southeast Asia.
It is palm oil. And it is driving one of the most catastrophic wildlife extinctions of the twenty-first century.
The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) has lost more than 50% of its population in the last 60 years. The Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) is Critically Endangered, with fewer than 14,000 individuals remaining. The Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) — discovered as a distinct species only in 2017 — has a total population of fewer than 800 individuals, making it the most endangered great ape on Earth.
All three species are losing their homes to the same thing: the expansion of oil palm plantations across the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
This is the story of the orangutan — the most human-like of all the great apes, the only one found outside Africa, and the one facing the most immediate, most preventable, and most consumer-driven extinction crisis in the world.
The Person of the Forest
The word “orangutan” comes from the Malay words orang (person) and utan (forest) — the person of the forest. It is a name that reflects centuries of indigenous recognition of the orangutan’s profound similarity to humans, long before Western science confirmed that we share approximately 96.9% of our DNA.
Orangutans are the largest arboreal mammals on Earth — animals that spend almost their entire lives in the forest canopy, rarely descending to the ground. A fully grown male Bornean orangutan can weigh up to 100 kilograms and develop distinctive cheek pads — flanges — that signal his dominance and attract females. These flanged males produce a deep, resonant call known as the “long call” that can be heard up to a kilometre away through the forest.
Orangutans are extraordinarily intelligent. They use tools — fashioning leaves into umbrellas to shelter from rain, using sticks to extract insects from tree bark, and employing leaves as gloves when handling spiny fruits. They plan for the future — carrying tools to locations where they know they will need them. They learn from each other — different populations have distinct cultural traditions, passed from mother to offspring over generations, in the same way that human cultures transmit knowledge.
A mother orangutan has the longest birth interval of any mammal — she nurses each infant for up to eight years, and the bond between mother and offspring is one of the most intense in the animal kingdom. During those eight years, the infant learns everything it needs to survive — which fruits to eat, how to build a sleeping nest, how to navigate the forest — from its mother. This extended childhood is only possible because the rainforest is rich enough to support it.
When the rainforest disappears, so does everything the infant needs to learn. And so does the mother.
What Palm Oil Is Doing to Borneo
Borneo is the third-largest island on Earth and one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Its ancient rainforests — some of the oldest on Earth, having survived the ice ages that stripped vegetation from much of the world — are home to orangutans, pygmy elephants, clouded leopards, proboscis monkeys, and tens of thousands of plant species found nowhere else.
Since the 1970s, Borneo has lost more than half of its forest cover. The primary driver is oil palm — a crop so productive, so profitable, and so globally demanded that it has transformed the economics of land use across Southeast Asia. An oil palm plantation produces more vegetable oil per hectare than any other crop on Earth, and the global demand for palm oil — driven by the food industry, the cosmetics industry, and increasingly the biofuel industry — has made it one of the most valuable agricultural commodities in the world.
The expansion of oil palm has been relentless. Satellite data shows that between 1999 and 2015, Borneo lost approximately 100,000 square kilometres of forest — an area larger than South Korea — much of it to oil palm. The forests that remain are increasingly fragmented — isolated patches surrounded by a sea of oil palm, connected by narrow corridors that are themselves under threat.
For orangutans, forest fragmentation is catastrophic. They are not adapted to travel across open ground — they are slow, conspicuous, and vulnerable to predation and human attack when they leave the forest canopy. Isolated forest patches cannot support viable populations. And when orangutans venture into oil palm plantations in search of food — as they increasingly do, driven by hunger and habitat loss — they are frequently killed by plantation workers who view them as pests.
The Killing That Nobody Talks About
The destruction of orangutan habitat is the slow, structural cause of their decline. But there is a faster, more direct cause that receives far less attention: killing.
Orangutans are killed in large numbers every year — by plantation workers protecting crops, by hunters supplying the illegal pet trade, and by people who simply view them as a nuisance. A 2018 study published in the journal Current Biology estimated that approximately 100,000 Bornean orangutans were killed between 1999 and 2015 — an average of more than 6,000 per year. The study’s authors described the findings as “an eye-opener, even for us.”
The illegal pet trade is a particular driver of killing. Infant orangutans are captured for sale as pets — a practice that requires killing the mother, who will fight to the death to protect her infant. The infants that survive capture face a life of profound deprivation — orangutans are complex, socially sophisticated animals that require years of maternal care, and infants kept as pets suffer severe psychological damage.
Is “Sustainable” Palm Oil the Answer?
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in 2004 to certify palm oil produced without destroying primary forest or harming wildlife. In theory, buying RSPO-certified palm oil should allow consumers to use palm oil without contributing to deforestation.
In practice, the picture is more complicated. Certification standards have been criticised as inadequate, enforcement has been inconsistent, and some certified producers have been found to be clearing forest in violation of their commitments. The RSPO has improved over time, and certified palm oil is genuinely better than uncertified — but it is not a complete solution.
Some conservation organisations argue that the answer is not sustainable palm oil but palm oil reduction — using less of it, replacing it with other oils where possible, and reducing the overall demand that drives deforestation. Others argue that palm oil, being so productive per hectare, is actually less damaging than the alternatives — that replacing it with soy, sunflower, or rapeseed oil would require far more land and cause more total deforestation.
The honest answer is that there is no simple solution. But there are things consumers can do: check product labels, support brands committed to genuine sustainability, and pressure governments and corporations to enforce stronger standards.
The Rescuers
Across Borneo and Sumatra, a network of dedicated organisations is working to save orangutans — one animal at a time.
The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation operates the world’s largest primate rescue and rehabilitation programme, caring for hundreds of orangutans orphaned by deforestation and the pet trade. The rehabilitation process takes years — teaching orangutans the forest skills their mothers would have taught them — before they can be released into protected forest.
The Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme works to protect remaining forest habitat, monitor wild populations, and resolve human-orangutan conflict. International Animal Rescue runs rehabilitation centres in Borneo. And dozens of smaller organisations work on community education, forest protection, and anti-poaching.
These organisations are doing extraordinary work. But they are treating the symptoms of a problem whose cause — the global demand for palm oil — requires a global solution.
What You Can Do
The orangutan’s crisis is unusual among wildlife conservation issues in one important respect: it is directly connected to consumer choices in supermarkets around the world. The palm oil in your food and cosmetics is not an abstract commodity — it is a direct link between your shopping basket and the forests of Borneo.
- Check labels — palm oil is listed under many names, including vegetable oil, sodium lauryl sulphate, and over 200 other derivatives
- Support RSPO-certified products where palm oil cannot be avoided
- Choose brands that have made credible, verified commitments to deforestation-free supply chains
- Support organisations working on orangutan conservation and forest protection
- Talk about it — consumer awareness is one of the most powerful forces for corporate change
The orangutan has survived in the forests of Borneo and Sumatra for millions of years. It will not survive another fifty years of the current rate of habitat destruction. But it could survive — if enough people decide that the person of the forest is worth more than the oil in their biscuits.
Go Deeper
The complete story of the orangutan — its intelligence, culture, the science of its conservation, and what you can do to help — is covered in our premium Orangutan Wildlife Guide.