Palm trees competing with orangutans for forests in Borneo

Here I am again with begging hands outstretched for help, but we need to make everyone aware of what’s happening to the orangutans in Borneo.

I was horrified by a story a friend of mine told me on her return to Borneo recently, to explore and study the wonderful life of orangutans that, she was told, abounded there.

Mostly, all she found were acres of palm oil farms instead of a rain forest. And the carcass of an orangutan, with her baby left to starve and rot next to its dying mother. The hunters had failed to find her corpse after shooting her down.

Our rainforests are being depleted at the expense of our planet, and our wildlife is being decimated for the sake of a few bars of bathing soap and palm oil used for a few cooking recipes—and to fatten the purses of some whose only concern in life is money. Since hearing that story I’ve stopped buying anything with palm oil in it. I haven’t missed it, nor would any of Inquirer readers, I think.

A tiny effort on everyone’s part to strike palm oil off their shopping lists would help enormously. This is not an advertisement, this is just me taking the pain of such things out of my system, with hope in my heart that some may be listening—and doing their part.

As well as attending to shopping lists, what about spreading the message to our respective governments not to follow Borneo’s barbaric and unnecessary example? No palm oil farms; no hunters on the rampage against orangutans or any other wildlife.

—ISABELA GONZALEZ, [email protected]