Borneo Palm Oil Boom Sparks Orangutan-Farmer Conflict
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- Edi Ramli and his family relocated from Java to West Kalimantan, Borneo in 2016 through Indonesia's transmigration scheme, settling unknowingly near Gunung Palung National Park's buffer zone — home to roughly 2,500 wild orangutans.
- Indonesia is the world's largest palm oil producer, responsible for 59% of global output worth about £26bn a year, with the crop appearing in roughly half of all supermarket products worldwide.
- Palm oil expansion in West Kalimantan peaked in 2012, when an area of ancient forest slightly smaller than Greater London was cleared in a single year, according to conservationist Karmele Llano Sánchez of the charity Yiari.
- Yiari, a West Kalimantan conservation charity, has rescued 270 at-risk orangutans over the past 12 years by tranquillising and relocating them away from farms and villages.
- Julie Sherman of Wildlife Impact co-authored a recent study arguing relocation causes more harm than good — moved orangutans struggle to find food, face attacks from resident apes, and some travel back more than 30 miles to their altered home territory.
- Smallholder farmers with plots as small as two hectares are a growing, largely unmonitored source of forest clearing, slashing open pristine forest rather than converting existing cropland, a study found.
Why it matters: Indonesia produces 59% of the world's palm oil — a £26bn industry — yet smallholders clearing pristine forest remain largely unmonitored, and a new study questions whether the standard rescue strategy of relocation actually saves orangutans. The standoff now pits a global commodity, 2,500 wild apes, and thousands of transmigrant farmers against one another on Borneo's shrinking forest edge.
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