Recent News

17 August 2009
Consumers secured an important victory today with Cadbury reversing its previous decision to put palm oil in its dairy milk chocolate. This will include all dairy milk chocolate made in Australia and New Zealand.

10 August 2009
AS SUMA, one of Melbourne Zoo's oldest orang-utans, fixes her trusting eyes on a playful toddler from the sanctuary of her enclosure, thousands of kilometres away her relatives in Sumatra and Borneo watch with fear the activities of the humans who come their way.

2 August 2009
A hundred or so orangutans have just returned from a day at "forest school," where they learn to find food, use tools and fear snakes.

24 July 2009
Asia Pulp & Paper’s proposal to convert the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem into pulp paper production in Sumatra - destroying critical Sumatran orang-utan, tiger and elephant habitat – continues to receive media attention.

23 July 2009
An article in New Scientist (22 July, 2009: Issue 2718) reports that October this year will see an unprecedented meeting of Malaysia's palm oil producers, conservationists and local government to figure out how to protect the world's last orangutans.

15 July 2009
European consumer groups and nongovernmental organizations have said they want environmentally friendly palm oil. Malaysian producers of palm oil that have made the switch are discovering that it is still a hard sell.

12 July 2009
A consumer backlash is mounting over Cadbury's decision to add palm oil to its chocolate, with Auckland Zoo pulling the confectionary giant's products from its shops and restaurant because of concern over the damage palm oil production does to rainforests.

4 July 2009
ENDANGERED orang-utans being raised in Australian zoos for return to Indonesia are about to have their rainforests razed to supply the global market for toilet and photocopy paper.

1 July 2009
In an effort to help save some of the world's disappearing tropical forests the United States is offering Indonesia some much needed debt relief.

30 June 2009
MALAYSIAN wildlife authorities have rescued three baby orangutans believed to have been smuggled into the country, in raids on a zoo and an ostrich breeder, a report said on Tuesday.

26 June 2009
As Borneo's rain forests are razed for oil palm plantations, wildlife centers are taking in more and more orphaned orangutans and preparing them for reintroduction into the wild. But the endangered primates now face a new threat — there is not enough habitat where they can be returned.

26 June 2009
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the World Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007: "The key understanding is to save the orang utan. For that, we must save the forest and by that, we are doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

23 June 2009
A famous British company, Jardines, is profiting as the lowland forest – which shelters the few remaining orang-utans – is razed to make way for massive palm oil plantations, reports Kathy Marks in Tripa, Indonesia

20 June 2009
Within a vast deforested area on Borneo island, Australia and Indonesia hope to turn an ecological disaster into a global lesson on how to help local communities save tropical forests and fight climate change.

16 June 2009
The nation's most recalcitrant fast food chain has capitulated. Yum! Restaurants, makers of KFC, will ditch its artery- clogging palm oil for a healthier alternative, two years after the company stared down the Federal Government and refused to change its ways.

6 June 2009
Selling credits for the billions of tons of carbon that are locked in Indonesia's tropical rain forests could be as profitable as converting these areas into palm oil plantations, a study released Friday found.

29 May 2009
Carbon credits derived from a fledgling forest conservation scheme for developing nations will struggle to compete with palm oil as an investment, industry advisers and conservationists said on Friday.

28 May 2009
Indonesia aims to more than double its crude palm oil output to 40 million tonnes by 2020 through increased yields and more plantations, officials said Wednesday.

19 May 2009
AN INDONESIAN paper company is planning to log an area of unprotected jungle which is being used as a reintroduction site for about 100 critically endangered orangutans, activists said on Monday.

15 May 2009
The Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) has recorded a significant decrease in the population of the morio (Pongo Pygmaeus Morio) orangutan in Kutai National Park, East Kalimantan.

11 May 2009
The operators of Britain's first "biofuel" power plants are considering burning palm oil, which is blamed for causing rainforest destruction in south-east Asia.

2 May 2009
It's an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won't find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It's there though, under "vegetable oil". And its impact, 7,000 miles away, is very visible indeed.